Realism
by Ninjacat
Summary: Maybe Itachi could trap him forever; a hundred years of torment locked in his brother’s Tsukuyomi. Maybe everything he had seen, everything he had suffered--everything was only a never-ending nightmare of Itachi’s design.
1. Chapter 1

Sasuke woke up.

It was entirely unexpected and rather disappointing.

- - -

For the 48th time since he had awoken (however surprisingly), Sasuke once again tested the rope knotted around his wrists. He tugged down hard against the handles of the bathtub, feeling absolutely no give in the metal or the clean white tile surrounding them.

"Fuck." Sasuke swore (for well past the 48th time), and gave at least one more hard pull before giving up---for now. It had taken him almost twenty minutes after waking up before he'd finally looked up and noticed the crisp paper of a seal taped over the rope and smacked hard between the hot and cold handles. Although many seals were unique to the maker, Sasuke knew enough to realize a lot more than rope was keeping him tied up---more like a ton of chakra and a little bit of blood. Sasuke was damn sure that wasn't regular ink swirling into incomprehensible sigils.

After taking a long time to breathe and boil silently in anger, Sasuke kicked out against the back of the bathtub. It sent his spine jabbing painfully against the faucet, and he cursed again. He didn't repeat the movement.

On the other hand, he wondered what kind of asshole had designed the water taps to jut out of the middle of the wall so high above his head. That just wasn't fair. His wrists were bound tightly above his head, giving him almost no slack to relax his arms. By his calculation, around five hours had passed since he'd woken up---but there was no telling how long he'd been unconscious in his position. His fingertips felt numb and icy and his arms just fucking _ached_.

Sasuke would never admit it, but being tied up to the bed had been a lot more fucking comfortable.

- - -

Sasuke didn't even open his eyes when the bathroom door finally creaked opened, some nine hours after he'd woken up.

"Untie me," he managed through gritted teeth. He kept his eyes shut. He _needed_ to keep his eyes shut.

There wasn't a reply. For some reason he wasn't surprised, but it didn't fail to piss him off anyway. He tugged his wrists down, his knees curling against his chest, almost trying to rip the rope with his weight alone.

"You shouldn't waste your energy."

"Fuck. You."

Silence.

Much better.

Sasuke turned toward the tile wall and finally opened his eyes. He studied the grout between the small white tiles, searching for imperfections in the plaster. He studied each one impossibly hard, not letting himself blink because.

Because he knew he'd shut his eyes and reopen them to the door. Which is exactly what he didn't want to do.

_Focus._

"I've brought you something to eat, but I can take it with me instead."

Sasuke didn't answer. He stared harder at the faint markings of rust on the grout, not willing himself to turn around. He didn't care about food, he wasn't fucking hungry.

"I don't know when I'll be back to bring you more. You may as well eat while you can."

"I'd rather fucking starve."

"That's entirely up to you."

Sasuke slammed his head back against the tile, feeling pain explode against his skull and spine (that fucking _faucet_) but he didn't make a sound. He whipped his head around, eyes narrowing furiously at his brother. He jerked his wrists down with more force than he had all day, feeling nothing but rage and hearing nothing but blood rush in his ears. A growl was growing painful and deep in his throat as he pulled but the only give he felt was not the one he wanted.

There was a rip. A pop.

His shoulder _screamed_ in pain when he could not.

Sasuke's eyes widened at the sudden shock of pain rushing through him, lips parting in an exhalation of surprise.

Itachi only watched on impassively.

"You shouldn't have done that," was all his brother said. Before Sasuke could find the voice to scream and howl with whatever was left in him to give, he felt a wet heat creeping down the back of his neck.

He thought he had broken the hot water tap.

"Sasuke..."

Itachi shook his head. Sasuke blinked in confusion---and a strange, sharp throbbing began in the back of his skull as the room blurred into a frenzied darkness---and that was all.

- - -

Pain was not the first thing that registered in Sasuke's mind when he finally came to.

His first realization was that the jet of water raining down on his head and soaking his clothes to his skin was _ice_ cold. So cold even his numb fingertips felt warm in comparison.

It was only when he tried to move that pain rocketed up his shoulder and lower back, a little bit like fireworks in his muscles. Hot and sparking, causing lights to flare behind his closed eyelids.

He jerked under the cold spray, a pained cry escaping him before he could even attempt to cut it off. He bit down on his lower lip immediately after, stifling the sound even though he continued to whimper lowly, mindlessly, in the back of his throat.

The water cut off, and Sasuke sighed so deeply in relief it felt as though death were draining from his lungs rather than air.

"How long have I---"

"Ten hours."

It was only when he heard that _voice_ did the final details of his situation once again become clear. Sasuke's head jerked up, causing a hot rush of pain down his spine. He needed---he needed to see---that man. His brother. Pain was so thick behind his eyes he could barely see but the swirl of black and red and near-white was all he needed.

Itachi.

Itachi crouched. An odd sight. Sasuke's breath was escaping him in rasping pants, eyes blinking heavily and he wondered if everything he was seeing was...even real.

Itachi was silent. Silent like death---which was something Sasuke had gotten fairly accustomed to over the years. He gazed back, almost uncertain if he was even awake. The icy water still clinging to his clothing was the one thing that helped him stay aware and alert, but it was quickly warming from contact with his skin.

"Sasuke."

He flinched. Visibly. It hurt to do so; another pained whimper resounded in the back of his throat.

"I'm not going to untie you. You will stay like this until I come back. I don't know when that will be." Itachi murmured. His voice was startlingly clear to Sasuke. Perfect and comprehensible when everything else had faded into colorless static and noise.

"I want you to remember this mistake, Sasuke."

Sasuke blinked blearily at him. The voice was clear but the words made no sense. He couldn't...he couldn't _stay_ like this. The sheer enormity of Itachi's words was---impossible.

Itachi stood. Itachi turned and left. Movements and motions that were completely lost to Sasuke's vision as it twisted and blurred, turning bright and vivid for almost an instant as Itachi shut the bathroom door behind him.

Sasuke didn't know how to pray. Somehow, it still felt as though a prayer had been answered when he finally lost consciousness and the room slipped away.

- - -

Naruto wouldn't leave him alone.

Naruto's idiocy, his ferocity and all of his ambitions---none of it left him _alone._ It was all he wanted. He never asked for a rival. He never asked for a best friend. He had tried so very hard to rise above everyone in his class, in the entire academy, mostly for strength but also because---if he removed himself and all of his dark goals from the rest…

Then maybe he wouldn't infect them. His darkness and his taint, all of his arrogance…it was his and his alone. He didn't want to share his pain. It gave him strength and drive. No one deserved to feel the pain that dogged him in his every waking moment. He separated himself. It was better that way for everyone. Best of all for himself.

Then maybe when it came time to kill his closest friend there would be no one to fulfill that role and he could defeat Itachi because he was strong enough on his own.

But Naruto---Naruto wouldn't leave him alone.

When Sasuke dreamed---more vividly and deeply than he could ever remember dreaming before---he found himself in a forest. Sunlight filtered gold onto the grass, the air smelled distantly of salt and the sea. He wasn't home.

"Home" being Konoha. He might have cringed. Konoha Village had not been his home in a long time. Perhaps not so long in years or even days, but what felt like an eternity in slow motion. A lifetime under the world.

He wasn't…_home_ but he knew where he was. The trees around him were different from the ancient forests surrounding Konoha, they were tall and slender and…_new._ The deep slashes on the bark were made by his kunai, the markings of a ninja, the first of their kind. It had never occurred to him before.

He was with Naruto. The first time it was...just them. They were running up the trees and leaving their mark so high up on the branches the civilians would marvel at the height for years to come.

Naruto's yell was in his ear. Echoing in the silence and warm stillness of the morning.

Their footsteps. Heavy and pounding and relentless against the bark.

They were alone. He dreamed, twisting and turning, of sweat pouring into his eyes and exhaustion burning hot in the center of his chest. It felt more real than---than anything.

They were alone and they never spoke but twice. They spent days in silence and Sasuke felt every moment of those days rolling over him freshly, a feverish dream. Naruto's yell. Naruto's footfalls and heartbeat and gasping breath all so much louder than his own.

Naruto never spoke and Naruto...never left him alone.

Sasuke knew that it was all a dream because it wasn't Naruto's feet that failed. It wasn't Naruto who fell clumsily from the height of the tree.

Sasuke fell. His feet slipped away from him, and even though he knew he had fallen, his eyes were on Naruto's outstretched hand and not on the approaching forest floor.

Sasuke fell and he never hit the ground.

- - -

Sasuke woke up.

It was disorienting and infuriating---and he wished.

He wished he hadn't.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time he woke, Sasuke's dream was a vague and shallow impression, lost in the rush of pain wakefulness brought him. Naruto's face and his extended hand lingered for only a moment in the back of his mind, and all that remained was the low burn of disappointment and regret in his gut.

Feelings that faded with every throb of his head. Pain was still radiating sharply from his dislocated arm, making it hard to think, hard to breathe and impossible to move. The arm was bound so tightly above his head he could barely feel his hand.

Only once did Sasuke attempt to pull his arm free.

White hot lights flared in his shoulder and behind his eyes, drawing a pained and panicked cry from him just before he blacked out.

After that, Sasuke was no longer capable of discerning his waking hours from his dreaming. He drifted for a long time with half-lidded eyes and mouth gaping open just to breathe, slipping in and out of dreams he didn't understand.

He dreamt of splinters in his fingertips, four cups of tea placed around an empty table, of feathers falling to the floor.

It didn't make any sense, but that didn't matter. He never remembered them anyway.

Sasuke didn't know how much time had passed since Itachi left. The only evidence that more than a day had passed (as opposed to only seconds) was that his clothes were no longer plastered to his skin, and that the blood that had crept down the back of his neck had dried.

Somehow, that was almost more bothersome than the injury that had bled in the first place. At least that was healing---he could do nothing about the pull of dried blood on his skin.

Occasionally he shifted, carefully twisting his head as to not further irritate his shoulder.

It never worked.

Pain shot up through his arm, but Sasuke only gritted his teeth and breathed, breathed, _breathed_ until the worst of it had subsided.

He wondered if Itachi had left him to die. It didn't seem likely, considering that his brother had left food for him. Whatever it was, it was out of his reach---although it might not have been if he hadn't denied the offer.

It didn't matter. He still wasn't fucking hungry. Not for anything Itachi had to offer him.

Sasuke winced, his head lolling against his uninjured arm, watching the door tiredly. It was shut, but not locked. Didn't seem necessary when he couldn't even get the ropes off, but that only infuriated him further.

He jerked sharply away from the door with a snarl, and didn't even have the time to regret it before he lost consciousness.

- - -

When Sasuke woke up, the bathroom door was wide open.

He was very gradually stirring to wakefulness, and it took a long time before he even began to comprehend what that could possibly mean.

The pain in his shoulder was almost unbearable. He couldn't move, he could barely breathe. He wondered just how long he had been unconscious but he almost didn't want to know.

It was only when he heard footsteps in the doorway that he realized---Itachi had returned.

Sasuke refused to look up. Refused to meet his brother's gaze and say even one word to him. He couldn't imagine what he would do if Itachi tried to talk to him.

In the end, it didn't matter that he refused to acknowledge Itachi's presence. His brother stalked silently across the bathroom floor and crouched by the bathtub without saying a word.

Sasuke was suddenly aware of the fact that he hadn't breathed in a very long time. Aware of the fact that his heart felt thunderous in his chest. Aware of the deafening rush of blood in his ears and he was aware of the fact that Itachi never made a single _sound._

Itachi reached out, and before Sasuke could even attempt to flinch away from him, painted fingers closed over his injured shoulder.

Sasuke's eyes opened wide as his vision swam. He couldn't even cry out at the resulting explosion of pain, but he inhaled sharply and instinctively drew his knees to his chest. As if that would help.

"Fuck, don't---" Sasuke gasped, eyes screwing shut.

Itachi didn't move his hand. He continued pressing his fingers against the sore muscles and the misaligned joint.

Blackness edged his vision as his head tilted back against the tile. He stared blankly at the opposite wall, never once turning to look at his brother.

Itachi squeezed one final time, and Sasuke could not hold back his scream.

- - -

He blacked out. He must have. He realized this belatedly, when he opened his eyes.

The bathroom door was shut. Itachi was no where in sight.

Despite himself, Sasuke was not surprised.

Pain continued to radiate regularly from his shoulder, and his eyelids felt incredibly heavy. He was more tired than he could ever remember being. His entire body fucking _hurt_ and he barely dared to breathe with the risk of jarring his shoulder. He knew he'd pass out again if he did.

Noises came from just beyond the bathroom door. Footsteps, the jangling of keys. A drawer sliding open and quickly shut.

Voices. His head spun and he couldn't identify---the second one. He would never forget Itachi's voice, never mistake any other voice for that one. It didn't matter how out of it he was.

Sasuke shut his eyes and rode a sharp wave of pain willingly back to sleep.

- - -

It wasn't long before he stirred again. He didn't open his eyes, but he warily attempted to assess the situation despite his muddled consciousness.

"…malnourished, and this injury---"

The voice was unfamiliar. Female.

Sasuke's eyes squeezed shut hard, and he tried to concentrate. To fight off the haze that had settled so heavily around his head.

"How long…" the voice continued, and after a very long moment, he realized that his arms were no longer bound above his head. His fingertips burned with the rush of returning blood.

He tried to move his arms. He couldn't.

"I would prefer it if you did not ask questions."

Itachi's voice. Crisp and perfectly clear. Sasuke could understand every syllable of his brother's words.

The woman's voice held none of the same interest for him. He could barely understand what she was saying.

"If you want me to heal him---" He slipped away for a moment, his head falling forward, "…how long he's had these…"

Sasuke drifted away completely at that point. He didn't even have the time to start dreaming before he heard an audible slam, a sound that reminded him of putting his fist through plaster.

Sasuke stirred blearily, lifting his head.

His eyes did not focus, and for a long time all he saw was a white blur of bathroom tile and shadowy figures near the wall. He blinked once or twice, willing his vision to clear up and let him _see._

Itachi came into view first. The black of his cloak and the scattering of red-lined clouds.

Sasuke blinked again, this time in confusion. What was Itachi _doing_?

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the sight before him. There was a woman, a stranger, and Itachi had his hand wrapped around her throat. Her skin turned red under his brother's pale fingers. He'd thrown her against the wall, and despite the shrill terror in her face, her eyes were curiously blank.

He realized quickly that Itachi was using the Sharingan on her. Her mouth dropped open and her head lolled forward. Hair spilled onto her face, it was dark and long and hid her eyes. Itachi was motionless.

Something pulled sharply on his consciousness, a fog rising in the back of his mind. The woman's face blurred from his sight.

Suddenly she looked---familiar. He couldn't place it. He looked harder, and he noticed that her hair was pale. Short. It was perplexing. He could have sworn...

The woman lifted her head and opened her eyes. Sakura. It was Sakura. Sasuke's jaw dropped and his face paled in unpleasant surprise---and Itachi put his hand through her chest before he could even make a sound.

- - -

"Sasuke, don't struggle. Stay still. She's almost done. "

Itachi's voice. Sasuke ignored it. He heard his brother's voice as though it were filtering through a shell, a gray film. He couldn't see. He could hear nothing but his own breathing and Itachi's voice.

He wondered when he had passed out.

Sasuke stirred more urgently, shaking his head drowsily. He couldn't---he couldn't open his eyes. Everything was muted and gray until he felt a hand press against his shoulder. He didn't make a sound, but he shook his head again.

There was a sudden sensation like warm pinpricks crawling down his arm. He didn't understand.

Not until someone grabbed his arm. Until they pulled and wrenched his arm forward and then back.

The joint realigned and he screamed.

- - -

When he woke, Sasuke jerked his arm to his chest before he even remembered that he couldn't.

But he could.

He could feel his fist gathered against his chest, over his heart. He didn't breathe, he waited for the pain to blacken his vision but. It never came.

His fingertips tingled. His arm ached dully but there was no...burn. No restricting, unbearable pain radiating out of his shoulder. Sasuke didn't breathe. He didn't dare.

Wearily, he glanced out of the corner of his eyes, trying to get a good look at his shoulder. Someone had torn the sleeve of his shirt off at the shoulder, and the curve of his arm was exposed. The skin was reddish but---his arm was back in place.

Sasuke didn't believe it. He didn't believe it at all.

Sasuke's eyes slid up, past the rim of the bathtub, glancing curiously around the bathroom.

The door was shut.

The bathroom floor was covered in blood.

- - -

Sasuke didn't need Sakura. He had no use for someone like her. Someone who needed to be protected and comforted and loved.

Sometimes he couldn't stand her.

Sometimes he wanted to shake her by her shoulders and tell her she was better than just _this._ His mother had been a Jounin. Sasuke had had kunoichi instructors who impressed even _him._ She didn't have to be...the way she was.

Sakura was wasting her time and whatever potential she had in her by waiting for Sasuke to notice her.

He didn't like her. He could barely stand her.

Still, inexplicably, the thought of her in harm caused an icy knot in his chest. The thought of her getting wounded caused his muscles to move when he thought they couldn't and caused strength and resolution to grow where there wasn't any left.

Sasuke dreamt, that night, of Sakura.

Not for the first time---although he wouldn't admit it, especially not to himself---and probably not the last. He'd never dreamed quite like this before.

Sakura sat beside him in the ramen bar. Naruto's favorite. Ichiraku. Sasuke could remember eating there several times after a mission. Naruto would beg Sakura to go with him, who likewise would beg _Sasuke_ to accompany them---and the deciding factor in the three of them eating there together was simply whether or not Sasuke was feeling hungry.

Naruto wasn't beside them. It was unusual. He didn't understand why he would have gone with her if Naruto wasn't coming. It didn't make sense and it didn't feel---right.

Sakura told him, swirling senbon needles through liquid too dark to be ramen, "I suppose it's a good thing you never loved me."

He didn't understand.

His eyes never left her face, and her eyes were distant and strange, focused on something Sasuke couldn't see.

"I'm not a little girl anymore. I don't love you like I thought I did."

Sasuke wanted to say, "That's good."

He didn't.

- - -

Sasuke woke up.

He felt strange and misaligned, and there was a tightness in his chest he didn't understand.

- - -

It was getting to the point where Sasuke could only tell that he'd fallen asleep when he'd woken up. He drifted in and out of dreams, which were growing more intense and vivid but impossible to remember for more than an instant after waking.

When the bathroom door opened, he barely heard it. It was only when he felt the cold water tap twisting did he become aware of the fact that he was, once again, tied to the bathtub handles. He couldn't remember when that happened. He also didn't understand how he could have slept through it---but the thoughts didn't bother him for too long.

The cold water tap twisted, tightening the rope around his left wrist. Sasuke hadn't even opened his eyes before icy water cascaded down on him and he cried out in shock.

The water cut off in an instant, but it had succeeded in getting him cold and wet and thoroughly pissed off.

"Good, you're awake."

Sasuke only growled wordlessly in reply. He stared, fixated, at his knees and refused to look up at Itachi. As if by not seeing him, he could pretend his brother wasn't there at all.

There was a rustling of heavy fabric as Itachi moved, and a soft clattering noise as something was set down on the edge of the white porcelain sink.

"You need to eat. The medic-nin informed me you've become dangerously malnourished."

The medic-nin. Sasuke jolted slightly and---despite himself---glanced at Itachi from the corner of his eyes. Just like he was afraid of, the sight of his brother made heated anger crawl violently in his gut. His arms tensed and he drew his hands into fists.

Sasuke wanted to kill him. And he would. Just not…now.

The medic-nin. His mind snagged on the words. She---she hadn't been a dream. She had come, and she had fixed his arm.

Sasuke swallowed hard and tried not to let the vision of Sakura's pale hair and green eyes drown him completely.

"Who---who was she?" Sasuke found himself asking. _Let it have been a dream. Let it have been a dream._

Silence. Itachi's cloak barely brushed the bathroom tiles as he turned.

The sight of narrow Sharingan eyes peering at him over the high collar of that cloak was infuriating. His muscles tensed and he longed for the freedom to move. To attack.

To finish it all.

His shoulder twinged, not quite in pain, and it served as a reminder of just how effective Itachi's bonds were. He didn't have the strength yet to break them.

Itachi just…watched him. Every passing second made it more and more difficult for Sasuke to swallow his rage.

"She was no one." Itachi answered him, at long last. His voice was flat and impassive but Sasuke…

Sasuke had always been able to read more into his brother's voice than anyone in all of their family. He cringed and looked away from Itachi, brushing past the realization.

Itachi was surprised. Or as surprised as was _possible_ for him to be.

Sasuke surprised himself by asking, "Did you kill her?"

Itachi didn't reply, but the answer was obvious. Sasuke's gaze slid down to his brother's feet, and realized that the blood was gone. White tile gleamed at him brightly from beneath Itachi's sandals.

Itachi just stood there. Eventually Sasuke looked up at him, anger sparking in his black eyes.

"So that's what you do, right? You use people until they've served some grand purpose for you, and then you kill them." Sasuke snarled hatefully. "You fucking bastard. Our parents, the clan, that girl---"

"And you."

Sasuke stilled. Completely.

His mouth shut and he looked away, staring bitterly at the grout between the shower tiles. He said nothing more.

Itachi took the food he'd offered Sasuke, and he turned around and left, shutting the door behind him.

It was only when Sasuke was completely alone that he allowed himself to pull his knees to his chest. To curl into himself like a child and grit his teeth so hard he thought they'd crack. The ropes around his wrists burned roughly against his skin, and he could feel cold water from the shower still dripping down the back of his neck.

_Why am I here?_

Sasuke pulled his knees harder to his chest. They were shaking.

He. He was shaking.

_Why am I here?_

He knew. He _knew_ and it brought him no peace.


	3. Chapter 3

The longest Sasuke had ever gone without eating was five days.

It hadn't been on a mission for Konoha, but a training exercise under the care of his…second home. The circumstances were certainly different, and he'd noticed the hunger far more quickly than he had before.

Then again, Sasuke was more than positive it had been longer than five days since he'd last eaten.

He tried not to care. He had water, despite the fact that to get it he would have to drench himself thoroughly under the cold shower to get even a mouthful. Water helped dull the hunger, if only for a few hours at a time.

Sasuke could deal with hunger. He was a ninja. He'd learned how to convert his body's chakra into pseudo protein and nutrients, but it was a difficult process that took more out of him to do than he felt was worth it. It wasn't actually helping him, although it made it easier to deal with the pain like the water did.

Even so, it was draining him completely.

Sasuke didn't know how long it had been since he'd been tied to the bathtub taps with the clunky faucet pressed hard against his spine, just that it was too long. Between his injuries and the lack of actual food over the days, Sasuke could tell his body was having an increasingly difficult time producing chakra.

He could barely summon up the strength to use the Sharingan. He didn't bother anymore.

Sasuke rested his head against his bare arm, shifting for the hundredth time in discomfort.

Itachi would make his grand fucking appearance within a few hours. It was like clockwork, and it was beginning to be the only method Sasuke had of telling the time.

Malnourishment and hunger had recently been causing him to lapse into semi-delirious states, and while they didn't _seem_ to last long, he could barely keep track of the minutes and hours.

Itachi had started to appear in the bathroom door regularly, offering food, although Sasuke always refused.

The pain was nearly constant. Sasuke knew, with a startling certainty, that if he carried on for even another few days, he would die.

It would be pretty damn anti-climactic.

------

"This is getting ridiculous."

There was an edge to Itachi's voice that he hadn't expected.

Was it worry? Sasuke cringed and continued to stare pointedly at the clean white tile at the other end of the bathtub. It wasn't worry; annoyance, probably. Itachi had always been patient, but everyone had their limits.

He shut his eyes, not saying a word, quietly mulling over the shadowy presence of his brother in the bathroom door. There was anger, there was _always_ anger and hatred, but exhaustion and hunger had dulled it.

That was infuriating in and of itself. Sasuke gritted his teeth and tried to focus past his body's weakness. If he didn't have the sharp edge of his hate to support him, he had nothing. His condition was temporary. His hate burned in him, burned through him, and _that_ was forever.

A strange kind of comfort. Sasuke almost smiled.

"If you're trying to kill yourself," Itachi continued, his voice showing some distaste where his expression likely revealed nothing at all, "it isn't going to work. I won't allow it."

There was a moment, a cold, silent moment in which Sasuke processed his brother's words and understood them.

His head snapped up and he had just enough time to jerk uselessly away as Itachi moved, more quickly than Sasuke could follow without the Sharingan, and he came to the side of the bathtub.

Sasuke's eyes widened and he shook his head wildly.

"No---"

Itachi's hand closed around his throat. Words were lost to him. He stared blankly into his brother's face and felt hatred _ache_ in the center of his chest. He couldn't summon up the strength to stop what he knew was coming, couldn't use his own Sharingan to even _try_ to fight back against Itachi's eyes.

_No. Not that. Not again._

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't shut his eyes.

"No---stop---" Sasuke gasped, black spots appearing in his vision, blurring the world that was slowly, painfully bleeding into red. Passing out, at that point, would have been a blessing, but Sasuke had never been particularly lucky.

------

It didn't matter how many years passed. It didn't matter how many months, weeks, minutes or seconds had separated him from that night, from the sight of Uchiha district littered with the bodies of his relatives---there were some wounds that would never heal completely.

Especially not with Itachi. Not with his Tsukuyomi, the vivid, nightmarish universe hidden in the depths of his Uchiha eyes.

The Mangekyou Sharingan drew Sasuke in, trapped him, a prisoner of his own mind, and ripped his old wounds wide open with every ghostly echo of the massacre.

Could it kill him? He wished it would. He wished the pain of his failures could finish the job Itachi refused to do.

He'd been trapped there before. For days and days, until he prayed to die, only to open his eyes and see that he'd barely blinked, and that he was, rather unfortunately, still very much alive.

For the first time, Itachi seemed to cut the torture uncharacteristically short.

It wasn't possible for him to feel grateful, but Sasuke almost laughed when he realized that Itachi didn't think he'd survive anything more than necessary.

His body was wracked with pain. He couldn't move, he could barely breathe. He was trembling. It felt as though the images of his mother and father were burned into his eyes, for he could see them so perfectly they may as well have been standing in front of him.

The real world slipped into focus, for just an instant, long enough for Sasuke to meet his brother's eyes over the distance of inches, long enough to tell him to fuck off and die, before the world slipped away, and finally he slept.

------

He'd never been entirely sure what to make of Kakashi.

If Team 7 was a little bit like a family, a bizarre assortment of individuals who, with the exception of Sakura, had no other family to speak of---he couldn't figure out where Kakashi fit in. It was difficult to respect him half the time, with his ridiculous opinions on teamwork and friendship, informal and unpredictable training methods…Kakashi was a friendly and yet completely unreachable human being.

Naruto had reached out to him as a friend, a rival, an equal---and Kakashi seemed to have tried to reach out to him in other ways.

As a teacher. A mentor. He had advice that Sasuke weighed but couldn't follow, and he seemed to want Sasuke to listen to him, follow his ways, and learn from his mistakes so that Sasuke didn't have to make any of his own. In that respect, it seemed Kakashi was trying to be more like a father-substitute than teacher.

Sasuke didn't need that. He wouldn't stand for it. His father was dead, and he had no need for another.

And if it was a brother's place that Kakashi was trying to fill…well, that was even worse.

Sasuke had had enough of brothers. There was only enough room in his life for one, and soon there would be no room for him at all, because Itachi was going to die. Sasuke was going to kill him. That had been decided, and Sasuke never did anything halfway.

He remembered---he remembered the weeks after the massacre, left alone in the empty house he'd lived in with his family all of his life. How, one afternoon, he'd succumbed to the compulsion to enter Itachi's bedroom, a place he had barely visited even when Itachi actually occupied it.

Sasuke hadn't known what to expect, although he knew what he had hoped for. He wanted to find evidence of his brother's insanity; he wanted to find the room a chaotic collection of a madman.

He was gravely disappointed to see that, quite the contrary, his brother's room was…unbearably normal. The sight was almost difficult, overwhelming in the lack of anything, anything at all that could be considered out of the ordinary.

Sasuke stood in the doorway for hours before, simply, like deciding on what he wanted to eat for lunch, he strode boldly into Itachi's bedroom and ripped it to shreds. He broke Itachi's bookshelves, destroyed his scrolls and whatever personal affects that could be found. He found a set of kunai in a drawer, and taking one out, he proceeded to cut up Itachi's pillow, his blanket, his bed.

Feathers cascaded down on him as he stood there, transfixed, regarding his work. It wasn't enough. He wanted the room unrecognizable, irreparable; he thought that if he could erase all evidence of his brother's life, then maybe Itachi might never have existed at all.

He shuttered the windows.

_No one ever lived here._

He sealed the bedroom door.

_No one._

After a markedly short period of time, he moved out of the house entirely.

_I don't have a brother._

All he had was Itachi.

------

Sasuke woke up feeling warmer and more comfortable than he had in---he grimaced uncertainly---a while. More than just a few days.

His body ached everywhere; he knew without having to look that he was likely covered in bruises. The pain wasn't concentrated into any one spot, not like it had been with his arm, but the all-over ache and soreness was almost more maddening.

He was tired. Warm, though. Almost comfortable.

Sasuke wondered if he'd snapped. He'd heard of people lost in blizzards that almost felt warm before the end, and wondered if his situation was comparable.

He opened his eyes slowly, and winced as he did so. There was a sharp stab of behind each of his eyes, and a sensation much like motion sickness that overwhelmed him as the colors of the room fell into place.

Aftereffects of the Mangekyou Sharingan. He'd survived it enough to know, and by now, he knew the symptoms well.

As well as anyone _could_, he supposed. Sasuke couldn't imagine Itachi let everyone he tugged into his torturous fantasyland to survive afterward.

Maybe he ought to feel special.

Or not.

Sasuke groaned softly, trying to stretch and work out some of his discomfort that way---when he paused.

The room came into focus. He wasn't in the bathroom anymore.

The realization rendered him silent; he didn't even dare to breathe. He was alone and the room around him was mostly dark. The shades were drawn, he couldn't discern the time.

It was a hotel room---which he recognized from before, and he was back on the bed for the second time since he'd been brought to the room. He'd started out there, but on his very first night of captivity, he'd learned that the bed afforded him some room for movement. He'd kicked and fought ferociously until one of his kicks neatly grazed the side of Itachi's face and…he'd woken up in the bathtub some hours later.

Sasuke glanced up at his hands, efficiently secured with rope to the headboard of the bed. Like his bonds in the bathroom, there was an unidentifiable seal slapped between his wrists that seemed to hold the rope in place.

And, just like his bonds in the bathroom, they were unbreakable.

Although, Sasuke reasoned for his pride, his strength was far more diminished than he had experienced in quite some time. The strain tired him, and for a little while, he stopped trying.

Especially since he had finally looked down at himself and realized, very abruptly, that the clothes he was wearing were clean, dry, and most definitely _not_ his.

Sasuke cursed bitterly, his chest seizing with anger.

That was it. Itachi was going to die.

Very, very slowly.

------

The moment the hotel room door opened and Itachi slipped quietly inside, Sasuke knew something was wrong.

His blood boiled and he would have given _anything_ to be free, to attack him, to fight with him like an equal---to feel Itachi's blood, _their_ blood, on his hands. Even if he couldn't pull free of his bonds, nothing would have stopped him from trying.

Or at least, that's what he would have liked to believe.

Sasuke felt his blood cool as he realized---he couldn't move. His arms, his legs, the column of his neck…he was frozen. Paralysis. He'd been a victim of it on more than one occasion, but when had---?

Itachi hadn't even _moved,_ not that he could see. Sasuke hated him.

He couldn't get his mouth to form words, but he managed to make a guttural noise in the back of his throat. _I'll kill you. I swear._

Over the collar of his cloak, Itachi regarded him in silence.

"I had hoped I wouldn't have to resort to this."

Itachi crossed the width of the hotel room and came to Sasuke's side. One of his hands appeared from the dark folds of his cloak, bearing a small package of what was---from the scent in the air---unmistakably food.

Sasuke hated his own body as it ached. Itachi couldn't force him to eat. He _couldn't._

"The hypnosis should last a few hours. I'll be back by then."

What the hell was happening? Since when was Itachi his _babysitter?_

Itachi looked up as he opened the package on the bedside table. Their eyes met, and Sasuke burned with the desire to look away.

"It would normally last longer, but you are…stronger than I expected."

Was that…approval? Sasuke felt something cold tighten in his chest. His skin crawled furiously, and it was almost easy to ignore his hunger with Itachi in the room. He was a beacon, something Sasuke could concentrate on and despise with everything he had to give.

Itachi placed the small package on his lap, and---to his astonishment---reached up and silently tapped the seal above Sasuke's head. The rope around his right wrist came undone as though nothing had been keeping it together, and limply his arm fell to his side.

He got a good look at his wrist for the first time in days. It was pale, bloodless, much like the rest of his arm, but there was a very ugly, dark bruise encircling his wrist. The skin felt raw and the sheets beneath him felt rough and abrasive against it.

Sasuke willed himself to move. To reach out with his hand and grab Itachi by the throat, to do _something_, anything---and he did nothing. His arm did nothing.

"You should eat," Itachi said softly.

The words were a command. Or at least he'd like to think so. His arm moved, taking what he could from what Itachi had given him---bread? Meat? He didn't care---and brought it to his mouth mechanically.

He wasn't in control. Looks like Itachi _could_ force him to eat. Could force his teeth to chew and throat to swallow, could permit his lungs to breathe and his heart to beat.

Itachi wasn't just refusing to kill him; he was forcing Sasuke to survive.


	4. Chapter 4

Two days passed, and Itachi was a frequent visitor to the hotel room where Sasuke was still tied to the bed, much to his humiliation and fury. Slowly, very slowly, his strength was returning---but not as much as he would have liked.

Just enough to survive, he figured. Itachi always managed to make it back to the room just as the grip of the paralysis loosened, even minutely, with Sasuke only able to wriggle one finger and his toes. It was frustrating. Discouraging.

But it would never stop him from trying.

He knew it was only a matter of time before he found his way back in the tub with both hands firmly bound to the water taps, and even at his full strength, he hadn't been able to break out. But for now, Itachi was leaving him alone for hours and hours at a time, because thanks to the hypnosis, his one unbound hand could only rest lifelessly at his side on the bed.

If there was ever a chance for escape, it was coming. Soon. He was beginning to understand the nature of Itachi's hypnosis, and he was determined to unlock it, to free himself. At any cost.

------

Sasuke inhaled, exhaled; formed a steady rhythm until he was almost completely relaxed for the first time since being trapped in the hotel room. Excluding the times when he was unconscious, at any rate. Otherwise, it had proved virtually impossible for him to stay calm while he was forced into this state of powerless vulnerability.

But he was working on it. It was a little easier when he didn't _think._

As long as his mind didn't linger too long on thoughts of Itachi, on his humiliation and anger at being held captive, or the white-hot hatred that had kept him alive for a few years shy of a decade, ninja instinct took hold. He could once again reach the icy core of his anger and achieve some measure of clarity.

Sasuke's instinct was fueled by a growing desperation, but as long as it ended in his survival, that didn't matter. His survival and Itachi's death. _Yes._

The thought brought him comfort and something too dark and complicated to be peace, but it was good enough. As close to peace as he might ever get while Itachi still lived.

Itachi had been gone for perhaps four hours. He'd never been gone longer than six, as far as Sasuke could tell. His senses were sharpening almost to their former level, and he could once again wake up and become aware of Itachi whenever his brother entered the room.

It was an improvement, but not enough of one. Although he really didn't have the time to worry about it.

Two hours. Maybe less.

Sasuke took another deep breath and held it in. He exhaled slowly when he chose to; when for a moment it began to hurt to hold it inside.

On any, any other day, making an exercise out of _holding his breath_ wouldn't have even been worthy of a laugh. But things change. On just any day, he'd never been a victim of hypnosis so powerful it regulated his breathing, his blinking, and the beating of his heart.

Sasuke couldn't quite smile, although he wanted to for the first time in days.

He'd regained control of his breathing. He'd regained the ability to blink at will about twenty minutes before, and his process was only picking up speed. When he relaxed, when he _focused_, he could feel the fingers of his free hand move, stroking circles against the bedspread, working movement back into the joints and muscles.

Within another ten minutes, he'd worked the freedom of motion back into his wrist. He could gather his fingers into a fist, could scrape his nails angrily at the bed beneath him.

When it became obvious that trying to maintain control of his own breathing and blinking was hindering his progress with his hands, he relinquished it, and let Itachi's hypnosis do its job. Sasuke committed all that was left of his attention and willpower into getting his free hand to _move_, into forcing himself to stay calm before frustration turned into real anger. Real anger was something he no longer had the time to rein back into control.

Time. He didn't have enough of it. It took nearly a half hour to coax more movement into his arm, enabling him to bend at the elbow. It was a victory; he'd never managed that much motion in all of his previous attempts, even though it wasn't enough. Not yet. He needed use of his shoulder as well.

By his calculations, he had little over an hour. Sweat was beading heavily on his forehead and the back of his neck. It was irritating, but he couldn't expend the energy necessary to do something about it.

Sasuke flexed his arm. The movement was strained and looked unnatural, but he could _feel_ it. He could control it. His arm, at the least, was _his_ again.

It was difficult, but Sasuke surrendered control of his limb long enough to glance at his other arm, inspecting the rope that bound it. It was just a rope. He knew enough from prior attempts that he couldn't pull free of it.

But rope was rope. Chakra was what kept it glued to the wall.

He wasn't entirely sure how he'd get free. If he had to claw at his wrist until he'd lost enough skin to tug himself free of the bonds, he would do it. He wouldn't hesitate. Itachi had crushed his wrist before, had splintered ribs and fractured his skull. It hadn't stopped Sasuke then, and this certainly wouldn't now.

Only death could do that.

When Sasuke refocused, he discovered he could still move his arm with some freedom, although he lost time trying to regain control of his elbow joint. Too much time. Even when he'd finally gained enough motion in his arm to use his shoulder, to hold out his arm, to reach back and awkwardly wipe the sweat from his face, he'd lost too much _time._

He had a half hour. If that. He'd lost focus. _Fuck._

Sasuke reached up, his arm stiff and ungainly, and tentatively touched the rope that held his other wrist captive. He tugged at it, scratched, tried to rip it off by force. It didn't work, and he didn't have the control to even clench his jaw in frustration.

He was losing time. His wrist was already bruised, but the pale skin around it was turning red, ugly and raw. His fingertips felt numb. He didn't care. It was only when his arm began to tremble and his fingers began to slip on the coarse rope that he finally surrendered to his desperation, his impatient and terrified need.

Sasuke knew himself very well. He knew what he was capable of, and he knew what he considered to be acceptable sacrifices in pursuit of his goal.

Just as he suspected; when the time came, he didn't hesitate at all.

------

It was most likely that upon entering the hotel room containing his younger brother, Uchiha Itachi had some idea of what to expect. Just the same sight that greeted him for the past two days; the same empty, paralyzed gaze that hid sharp hatred and enough anger to choke on.

When the room that greeted him was most certainly _not_ in the order he must have expected, Sasuke thought…it wouldn't matter. No matter what Itachi felt upon seeing what he did, in all things he was ruthlessly efficient and collected. He always had been. Few things wrenched a reaction out of his brother.

Sasuke should have remembered that he was one of those…few things.

He always had been.

The coverlet beneath him wasn't white; it was a vivid thing of oranges and reds, dulled with age. The blood that freckled on the cover wouldn't have stood out as particularly noticeable, nor the blood that had fallen onto his dark shirt. It was just wet and black, glistening faintly with the light from the bedside lamp.

It caught his attention, however, because he was Itachi. He noticed the unnoticeable long before he deigned his attention to the obvious.

Sasuke's arm was covered in blood. Sasuke's eyes were blank and impassive, still caught in the tangle of Itachi's paralysis. His body was still inanimate. It was only his right hand that moved, his fingers that furiously _clawed_ at the skin around the rope, the rope itself, until there was so much blood on both of his hands and the rope around his wrist that Itachi almost wasn't sure where it was coming from.

Itachi stood, silent and frozen, in the doorway.

"Sasuke," he said, his voice unexpectedly soft. The hypnosis that had paralyzed his brother was snapped in that instant, and Sasuke felt it. He writhed momentarily, as though caught in a seizure, before attacking his bound wrist with even more ferocity than before. He was keening like an animal, or a madman who had lost the ability to use words.

It had been two days since he'd been allowed to speak a single word. Longer since he'd said anything more than a venomous curse.

Itachi's stillness, Sasuke expected. What he hadn't expected came only an instant later, what he could barely comprehend until Itachi was at his side. His brother moved more quickly than he could hope to follow, his expression twisted into something Sasuke couldn't read. He might have once been able to; he recognized the expression distantly, but it was gone.

But Itachi wasn't. Itachi's hand lashed out so swiftly that Sasuke didn't even realize it _had_ moved until he felt his uninjured wrist in his brother's grip, until he felt pain shoot through his arm as Itachi slammed it into the wall over his head. Plaster crumpled onto the bed.

Sasuke shouted wordlessly. Senselessly. He struggled violently, trying to slip his arm from Itachi's grasp, trying to kick him, trying to do _anything_ he could.

The bed beneath him jolted abruptly, and it took Sasuke entirely too long to realize what had happened. Itachi had crawled on top of him, using body weight to keep Sasuke's legs from flailing, to grip his arm better, to---to take hold of his neck. To angle his head back until their eyes met, and Sasuke could see the twisted irises of Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan.

Sasuke cried out sharply. Itachi's grip was so tight on his throat he could already see blackness swirling on the edge of his vision. Or maybe that was the Tsukuyomi. He couldn't tell.

_Not again, not so soon, I can't---_

His thoughts spilled messily, wildly, into words that even he could barely understand. "---take it again. Don't, don't do this---_please!_"

And abruptly, he cut himself off, reeling in disgust and horror.

Please. He'd said---_please._

He hadn't said that to his brother since he was eight years old. Funny that it still had the same effect.

------

It was always the same.

The room slid away, and Sasuke waited for his world to end violently around him. Without him. Alone in a street of bodies, alone in a house of ghosts.

In this one way, Itachi had never disappointed him.

------

When he saw his mother, Sasuke knew he was dreaming. He knew that he had slipped from the nightmare-world of his brother's creation and into one of his own without ever returning to consciousness. That struck him as particularly ominous.

He knew it was a dream because she was whole, smiling and beautiful, and her blood wasn't soaked into the mats under her feet from the katana Itachi had stabbed into her chest.

She was standing, faced away from him, although she had turned her head to smile at him briefly. The pain that followed was unexpected; it felt as though it were _his_ heart pierced with Itachi's katana instead of hers. He almost wished it had been. He'd been afraid to die, as a child. He would have welcomed it, had he known the life that awaited him after that night.

The scent of her cooking filled the air warmly. He missed it. He missed _her._ His father, too, but the man was no where in sight. On a mission, perhaps---Sasuke could feel himself sinking into the dream like cool, inviting water. He could drown in it. He wanted to.

_Let me stay here,_ he begged. He could stay there forever, with the afternoon air creeping in through the kitchen window, the clinking of dishware, the curls of steam rising as his mother cooked---he wanted to _stay._

"We never wanted this life for you," his mother said quietly, in a voice that implied an old argument. Her voice accentuated the stillness, the innate perfection of the dream, rather than disturbing it.

Sasuke could feel himself sigh. It was difficult to look down at his hands and realize they were scarred and slender and large---_his_ hands. Not a child's. Somehow, that made everything more painful.

"I know," he replied easily, and leaned onto the low table that seemed much smaller than he remembered. His knees no longer fit beneath it comfortably.

She turned to him and offered him the saddest expression he could imagine. It cut him, but he didn't flinch.

"We _never_ would have asked this of you."

"I'm not doing it for you," Sasuke said bitterly, and hated that it was true. His mother, his father---maybe his entire family, they didn't want to be avenged. They were dead. _They_ were the ones at rest, in peace.

He was the only one tormented, the only one capable of feeling pain anymore, and the only one that wanted to share that pain with the one who had caused it.

She surprised him by smiling. "At least you can be honest about it," she sighed, defeated.

For a little while, there was silence. The slow hissing of steam dissolving into warm air.

"I'll see you soon," Sasuke whispered abruptly; a harsh, angry promise. His hands tightened into fists, and her eyes narrowed.

"I certainly hope not."

------

"Sasuke."

_No. Please._

"Sasuke?"

"Don't," Sasuke croaked, and was overcome by the sudden knowledge that he was trembling. He didn't open his eyes. The dream was lingering warm and beautiful in the edges of his thoughts, and he felt as though he could sink right back into it if he tried. If Itachi would just let him _sleep._

Always the dutiful brother, Itachi touched his shoulder gently to wake him. Sasuke recoiled violently, sleep forgotten, although the room swayed as his eyes jerked open. For a moment, his brother's face was a shivering mirage of white and black and red.

It was a fucking nightmare. Sasuke almost-whimpered, lowly, in the back of his throat, it escaped him too quickly to muffle it. His body ached. He was cold. Even when his vision cleared, there was something wrong.

The colors were all wrong. Too vivid. Too sharp. He shut his eyes, taking a deep breath. It hurt. The ache was there, behind his eyes, and a crippling sense of nausea as his head lolled to the side. He could feel himself drifting, slipping back into sleep, without even trying. In fact, he was trying _not_ to.

It wasn't until he heard the rustle of Itachi's cloak at his bedside that Sasuke jolted again, and felt the familiar restriction of his arms bound to the headboard above him. Both, this time. He had a feeling Itachi wouldn't be leaving him alone much anymore.

Sasuke opened his eyes, even though the dim light from the bedside lamp burned into his eyes and he thought he'd die from the motion-sickness he felt. He was tired. Everything hurt. The colors stabbed in his eyes.

Itachi hurt most of all. He said nothing. He never moved. His painfully red gaze never left Sasuke's face.

"How long was I--?" Sasuke managed, his voice sounding thin and raspy. He was thirsty, but couldn't imagine being able to stop trembling long enough to take a sip of anything offered.

Itachi was silent for a moment. "More than a day," he replied quietly. "I might have let you sleep, but you…"

Sasuke watched his brother closely, and shut his eyes again. He could plainly hear the words Itachi wasn't saying, and that bothered him more than anything. He'd been crying. Screaming. Something like that. It had been enough to make Itachi wake him, and that was pretty bad.

More rustling. Sasuke almost didn't open his eyes at all. He didn't care. He was _done._ He would sleep, get his energy back, and think of a new way to escape his bonds and close his hands around his brother's throat until he felt peace.

_Peace._ He sighed. His body trembled. He couldn't get it to stop, so he eventually didn't bother to try.

Something warm grazed his wrist gently. It hurt, a dull stinging, and Sasuke cried out softly more in shock than in pain. His eyes flew open, the room continued to spin wildly. Itachi was at his side, arm extended, fingers brushing his inner wrist.

Sasuke looked up, realizing for the first time that the blood that had slickly coated his arm the last time he'd seen it was gone. Cleaned off. His wrist was neatly bandaged in white gauze, and not a drop of blood could be seen on the bandages.

Unconscious for more than a day. He trembled harder, partly in anger.

"You need to be more careful, Sasuke," Itachi said. Again, his fingers carefully grazed the clean swath of gauze, and Sasuke didn't breathe. "I won't call another medic-nin for you."

Sasuke could feel the press of his fingers through the thick gauze. He jerked away from Itachi, his expression twisting.

"I'm not a little kid anymore," he hissed. Itachi gazed down at him, his face mostly obscured by his high collar. Sasuke's expression was murderous but Itachi's was blank and indifferent.

Itachi pulled his hand away; it disappeared quickly into his long sleeve.

Sasuke managed a cold, bitter smile right before the shadows in the room overtook his vision and everything slid into black.


	5. Chapter 5

Sasuke stirred blearily; his vision was blurry and his head felt muddled and unclear. When he opened his eyes, it was like staring at the world from under the water, rippled and unreal. Unnatural.

Itachi was the one thing that stood out from the surreal mess of painful colors and light, but his features weren't _right_---he seemed as though his face was being formed from Sasuke's memory of him and not the actuality. He looked too young, his eyes too wide, his expression too open. It was unnerving.

He felt his head loll back. He stared at his brother blankly. It was a dream. It had to be. The colors in the room shifted and swelled and hurt his eyes.

Itachi was sitting on the edge of the bed, his face an impassive mask that never blinked and never looked away, as though Sasuke were still worth more than a cursory glance.

Sasuke's arms were still bound tightly above his head. From what he could gather, he was still on the bed. His brother hadn't seen fit to put him back in the bathtub yet, it seemed.

"I miss her," Sasuke felt himself say, drowsily, for a reason he quickly forgot. His eyes slid shut. He could still see her. Her pale face hovered on the edges of his mind. He could hear her voice. It was beautiful. He ached, and he couldn't remember the last time he had been so tired.

Itachi stood. Sasuke felt the bed creak slightly, but he didn't open his eyes. It wasn't the worst dream he'd had lately.

Something brushed the top of his head. A gentle stroke through his wildly tangled hair.

"Sleep, Sasuke."

_I already am_, he thought, and willingly slipped back between the warm currents of another, better, dream.

- - -

Sasuke's eyes slid open. The room burned slowly into focus, stabbing through the back of his eyes. He groaned, and his head slumped forward tiredly.

He wasn't ready. He felt as though he could sleep for days and it wouldn't be enough. His vision was blurred on the edges, but he could make out the sight of his legs stretched out in front of him, the dull red coverlet beneath him, and the edge of the bed that seemed to go on forever.

Where was he? Where? He could have sworn, just a moment ago, he'd been--where? Fuck, he didn't know. Pain pricked behind his eyes and he forgot.

His brother slid into view--and he remembered.

"No," Sasuke felt himself groan, shaking his head. "Not again--I can't--"

What was he saying? That wasn't right. Disbelief and anger at his automatic reaction caused a flare of pain in the center of his chest. He _hated_ Itachi, but he refused to be afraid of him. He wasn't a child. He wasn't going to beg anymore, not for his life, not for anything. Let Itachi hurt him. He didn't care; he'd been through worse before--

Itachi sat down on the bed beside him. The mattress dipped under his weight. Despite his resolution not to fear Itachi, Sasuke flinched immediately away from his brother in a flutter of senseless panic.

_No. No. No._

"Sasuke."

_Please. Stop hurting me._

"I've brought you something to eat. You need to wake up for a little while," Itachi said expressionlessly. His voice was a still river, too deep to be trusted. Sasuke could feel himself being tugged under by a current he could not see.

The room swayed as he looked back at Itachi. He was going to be sick. He didn't want to eat. He just wanted to sleep.

Itachi placed something on his lap, a plate of food. He briefly considered kicking it off, but his stomach growled, despite the dizzying nausea. After Sasuke gave no verbal protest, Itachi reached up to the seal keeping his hands in place and tapped it softly.

Sasuke clenched his jaw in pain as his arms limply fell from above his head. They were bloodless and white, save for his wrists, which were dark with bruising. One of them was still encased by clean bandages. He couldn't even begin to imagine what his skin looked like beneath the white gauze.

He frowned, trying to recall when he had acquired the injury, and found that his mind came up curiously blank. The memory of hot blood creeping down his arm, of skin coming apart under his fingernails, Itachi above him and crushing him down into the mattress--fragmented images that made just as little sense together as they did apart. It was a lot like looking through a broken window and into a dark room. He didn't want to know what might be waiting for him in the corners he couldn't see.

A strange thought caught his attention, rousing him from his momentary daze. Itachi hadn't released just one of them, but both. Both of his hands could be seen, stark and pale, splayed out against the rust-colored blanket.

"Itachi," Sasuke heard himself say. His brother's name tasted like blood on his tongue.

Itachi barely moved, but Sasuke could swear he saw a flicker in his red eyes. But a flicker of _what_, that was the question. Sasuke didn't really want the answer.

"Sasuke."

An acknowledgement, no real curiosity or interest. What else could he expect?

Sasuke laughed, and the sound filled the room. The back of his head jerked painfully back against the headboard of the bed. Itachi fell from his sight so quickly that it was as if the floor swallowed him up.

The ceiling filled his vision. Mostly white with water-stains and rings of light from the bedside lamp. The roof rippled as he watched. It was unreal.

"I can't move my arms," he said.

- - -

Sasuke couldn't help but think, in the sparse hours where he lay awake and almost lucid, _How many attacks of the Mangekyou Sharingan can a person take and survive?_

Never mind the physical strain on the body and nervous system--how much damage could a person take until their mind could no longer stay intact? He was losing pieces of his life with every little trip into Itachi's nightmare-world.

More than that. He was losing--_fuck_, he was starting to lose everything. He thought of fighting battles on the edges of cliffs and narrow bridges, how missing one step could mean the difference between steady footing and nothing but air. Losing focus was death, if it made him forget where ground dropped off to a very sharp, unpleasant fall.

He couldn't focus. He couldn't stay awake and he couldn't _remember_. Sasuke was becoming increasingly aware that sooner or later he was going to slip off the ledge he fought against, and that there would be no coming back.

- - -

If he dreamt, he could no longer remember. When he pulled free of another dark, thick sleep brought on by the aftershocks of the Mangekyou Sharingan, he awoke with a jerk that shook the bed and a gasp that echoed in the empty room.

Or, seemingly empty. Itachi stood in the doorway, as though he had been just leaving. He turned slowly, and Sasuke slumped back down into the warm mattress.

His heart thudded in his chest. It trembled through his entire body. If he shut his eyes, he could feel it thundering through him.

Sasuke didn't shut his eyes. Itachi was far too close for his comfort.

He wondered, as Itachi walked back to his bedside, just when Itachi's presence had become discomforting rather than infuriating. He didn't really have the time to think upon it any more than that.

Itachi stood at his side. He reached forward, and Sasuke was too tired to jerk away from his brief touch.

Itachi's fingers brushed the bandaged part of his wrist. Sasuke could feel the gentle pressure of the touch even through the thick gauze. He shuddered and turned his eyes away.

He wanted to ask, _What are you doing?_, and he decided that he didn't want to know the answer. Itachi had not seen fit to retie his arms, but Sasuke had been sleeping the majority of the time anyway. Although he was starting to wake up for longer, more steady periods of time now. He imagined that it wouldn't be long before Itachi bound him to the headboard again.

"Your wrists," Itachi murmured, snapping Sasuke out of his thoughts. He blinked down at his brother, eyes trailing to where his fingers brushed the bandages on his wrist. Although the sight of them certainly bothered him, he couldn't figure out what about them bothered _Itachi._

"What…" he trailed off, perplexed.

Itachi pressed harder into the bandages. Sasuke cringed at the flare of pain that followed. He hissed out loud, wincing away from Itachi's touch. "Don't!"

"Move your hand," Itachi said.

Sasuke stared at him. Pain radiated up his arm from the wrist. He didn't want to move his hand at all, but Itachi kept watching him. He shuddered out a sigh, lifting his arm from the shoulder. He watched the rest of his arm follow, trembling as he held it up. He flexed his fingers and regretted it. Sharp sparks of pain lit up the nerves in his arm and he gritted his teeth to keep from letting Itachi know about it.

But Itachi seemed to know that it hurt him regardless. After a moment, Sasuke dropped his arm back to the bed; Itachi let him.

His brother lapsed into silence, musing to himself. Sasuke waited, and although he should have known better than to expect Itachi to share his thoughts, the wait was frustrating anyway. What the hell was going on? This was about _his_ arms--he wanted an answer.

"Well? What?" he snapped finally.

Itachi straightened, his distant expression appearing--for a second--quite thoughtful.

"It is possible," he began, in a tone that implied nothing more significant than the number of clouds in the sky, "that in your struggles to escape the restraints, you may have caused permanent injury to the tendons in your arms."

Sasuke felt a cold chill run through him. His body stiffened on the mattress, first in shock and panic, but quickly it heated into anger.

"You say that like it's _my fault_," Sasuke said bitterly, and only felt angrier when Itachi continued to stare at him as though he couldn't possibly imagine whose else fault it could be. "You bastard, I'll--" he spat, and Itachi interrupted him before he could continue.

"If you would like to continue using your hands, I wouldn't suggest that you try anything," Itachi said calmly, unruffled. Although it seemed like he was referring to the damage already inflicted, when their eyes met--a quick, unpleasant flash of Uchiha black and Uchiha red--Sasuke couldn't help but hear a second message, unspoken but hard to miss.

_I will remove them if necessary._

Furious, Sasuke tore his gaze away from his brother and fixated on his arms. Specifically his wrists, which he had been trying to avoid looking at. Twinges of pain ran up his arm from the wrist with every beat of his heart. Something was obviously wrong. He didn't want to think about what that could mean.

Itachi took a step away from the bed.

"Given some time, the damage may heal," he was saying. Sasuke struggled to listen to him calmly despite his anger. He watched Itachi wander silently towards the door, and as the doorknob twisted in his hand, he turned his head.

Their eyes met. Sasuke's chest clenched painfully.

"I will not restrain you again," Itachi said simply. The door opened, and he disappeared into the hallway outside.

- - -

He wondered, abruptly, if he was dreaming again.

"Sasuke, you need to eat," Itachi said, interrupting his idle thoughts. Sasuke stared at the ceiling warily, feeling a pang of something familiar, something he could not place as hard as he tried.

Déjà vu. Hadn't he been here before? He felt pretty sure that he had. How had it ended the first time?

"Sasuke. I do not have the time for this."

His eyes slid over to where his brother stood, several feet away. There was nothing in his expression that could be read, just a carefully controlled blankness. His voice, however, was colder than usual--Sasuke couldn't figure out when he'd readjusted to the particular nuances of his brother's moods, but he had. It bothered him, when he chose to think about it.

His throat hurt too much to speak, so he turned his eyes away without a word.

There were footsteps at his bedside, near silent yet impossible to miss. Sasuke's head jerked in his brother's direction, only in time to see a swaying blackness approach and feel Itachi take hold of his arm firmly. Sasuke gasped in the shock of pain, his brother's face blurring in a haze of vivid white against an irrelevant background.

"Do not force me to put you under hypnosis, Sasuke," Itachi said, his voice a deadly soft promise. The message should have meant nothing to him, but it pricked the growing sense of familiarity Sasuke felt with the situation, and panic bled bright and hot from his chest.

His body stiffened on the mattress, staring at his brother in a wide-eyed fear he couldn't name, couldn't place--but he thought of blood under his nails, days of immobility, and--he was suddenly, startlingly, all too aware of the way Itachi was gripping his arm.

"No, no--don't," he stammered, tense with dread. It felt as though Itachi's fingerprints would be burned into his skin just from the contact, and as he furiously wrenched his arm out of his brother's hands, it didn't even occur to Sasuke that his brother might not let go when he was ready to pull away.

- - -

"It isn't broken," Itachi informed him, some hours later.

Sasuke, who had been drifting quietly into a doze, roused long enough to scowl at him mutinously. The fact that he had enough energy even for _that_ was uplifting in and of itself.

He opened his mouth, willing himself to make words. His throat was dry; it ached with dehydration and disuse. He swallowed, eyes flickering down to the sight of his wrist dangling weakly between his brother's hands, fingers spasming as Itachi pressed against the tendons. His touch was alarmingly gentle. Even so, Sasuke didn't like it.

"Let--let go," Sasuke spat. In an unexpected burst of strength, he jerked his arm away from his brother's hands, not caring that he had obtained the injury in just such a display of stupidity before. He tried to ignore the pain that shot up through the limb, nerves flaring white hot under his skin. His fingers twitched and clenched against his stomach as he cradled it. His skin burned where his brother had inspected it.

Broken, maybe not, but it still hurt. The injuries in his tendons were far from healed, and he had very likely aggravated them all over again. Sasuke forced his gaze away from his brother, staring his feet at the end of the bed instead. Itachi remained.

Idly, Sasuke picked at the healing skin of his wrist. There wasn't any need for the gauze anymore, but the arm had certainly had better days. He could see deep grooves of pink, healing flesh, edged hard and dark red, obviously self-inflicted. He couldn't remember exactly when he'd done it, he only knew that he had.

Sasuke's fingernails bit deeply into the scar tissue. Blood welled under his touch.

"Don't." Itachi murmured.

"Shut up," Sasuke replied. He barely knew his own voice.

Itachi reached toward him. Sasuke flinched away with a short, strangled cry catching in his throat.

His brother sat back without touching him.

The urge to thank him for that small mercy--_thank_ him--came and went quickly, and Sasuke could only tremble in disgust at the sharp stab of frenzied gratitude he felt in his chest.

- - -

In the morning, Sasuke stood by himself for the first time in days. He'd lost count of how many. The muscles and bones of his legs ached and his knees felt weak. His first few steps from the bedside were awkward and stumbling, and fleetingly he felt grateful that Itachi was not around to witness the first more graceless moments.

It took him almost a minute to remember how to gather chakra in the soles of his feet, steadying himself by adhering himself to the floor. It should have struck him as bad that he couldn't stand without assistance, but Sasuke couldn't help but feel grateful he could stand at all.

Shaky, he threw a hand out and gripped the edge of a nearby dresser. He paused for a long time, feeling the steady ache in his legs, listening to the sound of his ragged breathing in the empty hotel room.

He must have stood there longer than he realized, because although it seemed as though only a matter of hours had passed since Itachi's last visit to the hotel room, Sasuke could hear footsteps outside the door. He thought quickly of heading back towards the bed, and before he even took a step, he knew he would not be able to stumble across the room in time.

The doorknob turned, and those footsteps quickly brought his brother into sight.

Sasuke clenched his fist on the edge of the dresser in an abrupt pulse of fear.

He thought, _What if he sees--_, but didn't finish the thought. He swallowed hard, and forced the fear away. He'd never been afraid of pain before. Never like this. It was deeply humiliating for him, and he didn't want to share that with Itachi.

Sasuke lowered his hand from the dresser edge, standing as straight as he could before Itachi glanced up at him.

Something passed through Itachi's expression--maybe surprise, annoyance, Sasuke could never be sure--although it was gone by the time he lifted his gaze up from the bed where Sasuke was _supposed_ to be. Itachi's eyes locked with his over the distance of the dim hotel room.

Sasuke felt hot and suddenly claustrophobic, as though the room had shrunk in size. He may as well have been standing right next to Itachi, for all the space he felt between them.

"Sasuke," Itachi began. Sasuke waited but after several moments passed, he realized Itachi had nothing more to say. Was he waiting for some kind of explanation for why his younger brother was no longer where he'd been left?

Sasuke's sense of claustrophobia only tightened in the air around him in the time it took for Itachi to realize he wasn't going to answer. It was difficult to remember how to breathe, he felt trapped and the room only seemed to be getting smaller and hotter.

It was getting harder to support himself without help. For a second, his balance wavered.

Itachi noticed. He took a step forward, and Sasuke jumped back reflexively.

"I'm not--" he hurried to start, but cut himself off quickly. He sneered and looked away from Itachi. What was he going to say?

_I'm not doing anything. Don't help me. Don't hurt me. Don't touch me._

Sasuke had wanted to stand. To walk by himself, just to see if he could.

"I see that you have gained back some of your strength," Itachi murmured noncommittally. Sasuke sneered in reply. He had nothing to say. Or, he did, he just didn't trust the way it would come out or be interpreted by his brother.

"Yeah," was all Sasuke managed, after a long pause. His throat was tight and his head was swimming. He needed to sit down, but he wasn't sure his legs would carry him to the bed without falling.

He took one deep, shaking breath and decided it didn't matter. The fact that he wasn't currently tied to the bed or lying half-conscious in the bathtub expressed just how much of a threat Itachi saw him as, and Sasuke wasn't doing himself any favors by being stubborn. He expelled as much chakra as he felt comfortable with wasting just keeping his feet adhered to the ratty hotel room carpet.

He couldn't help but turn angry and red as he wobbled precariously towards the bed. Itachi made no move to assist him as he walked--which was better for the both of them. Had Itachi tried, Sasuke wasn't sure he wouldn't have tried to rip off the offending arm in reply.

The bed creaked under his weight as he sat down, his limbs heavy and awkward. He wondered just how weak Itachi must consider him to be after watching him walk, and he laughed at the thought.

Itachi tilted his head, as though curious. Sasuke flushed and looked down, the manic laughter dying in his chest.

"It's nothing," he spat, staring down at his knees. They were trembling slightly. He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax, and slowly the trembling ceased. The room was silent.

For the first time, he thought: _What next?_

He was getting stronger. He could walk on his own, even if not very well. His arms were still injured, but he was more certain that they would heal as well if he gave Itachi no further reason to restrain him--for now, at least.

So what next?

He looked up at his brother, and realized, with a cold chill, that he had never once thought of escaping the hotel room. Escaping his bonds, of course, but never the room itself--not until Itachi was a bloody smear against the floor. He'd never considered himself a willing captive until that moment, because he'd never had any intention of leaving.

Sasuke flexed his fingers. Pain flared in the tendons of his wrist. It hurt and he barely cared, because at least he could _move._ He wasn't helpless anymore, and still Itachi had not restrained him. Maybe his brother didn't care how much strength he regained because it would never be enough to defeat him, or maybe…

Maybe this entire time it had only been his spirit that Itachi wanted broken.

"Our parents would doubtlessly be very proud of you," Itachi murmured, causing Sasuke to flinch sharply as though he'd been struck. Briefly he wondered if he'd prefer Itachi shattering his wrist to daring to speak of their parents in front of him.

"What…?" he managed, wide-eyed and his voice clumsy with disbelief. "Why are you--"

Itachi turned around soundlessly, meeting his eyes over the collar of his cloak. "It was always a source of great pride for the Uchiha clan, that our shinobi be capable of withstanding torture for long periods of time and survive." He shrugged, as though he were discussing something that had little to do with him, like the changes in the tide.

Sasuke stared at Itachi for a long time before, inexplicably, he began to laugh. His head hung low as he stared down at his knees, smiling bitterly.

"Torture?" he muttered, another laugh shuddering through him. He crossed his arms over his legs, studying the bracelets of scar tissue circling his wrists. He thought of days and weeks restrained in the bathtub. He thought of dehydration and starvation and pain. Eventually, he shook his head. "No, it's not--being near you, that's the real torture."

Sasuke looked up in time to see a very sharp, quick smile tug on the corners of his brother's mouth.

"Even so," Itachi said quietly, with a polite bob of his head.

Sasuke stared up at him darkly, ignoring the fringes of his hair that had overgrown long and wild, hanging into his eyes. The center of his chest felt tight. Itachi had the audacity to mention their parents to him. As if he had the right to even speak of them. Itachi had killed them, had cut their throats and escaped into the night so expertly that even the Anbu couldn't find his tracks.

He'd run. Why not stay, if he wanted a challenge? Why not kill the whole village while he was at it, why stop one person shy of his entire bloodline?

Sasuke didn't know. He wasn't sure if he wanted to--if it were even possible to understand his older brother's skewed logic.

"You--you're such a fucking _coward_," Sasuke hissed, shaking. Before he even finished saying the words, a part of him was already tensing in fear. Mistake.

Too late now.

Itachi took a step toward him. Sasuke barely managed to resist cringing away from him.

"What was that?" Itachi questioned softly. A thousand things fluttered into Sasuke's mind as he lifted his head, apologies and explanations, and all were dismissed. He looked up and back into Itachi's eyes, and for the first time in weeks, he felt no fear as he met his brother's impassive gaze.

"I said you're a coward," Sasuke answered, his tone hushed, his eyes empty. "Because that's exactly what you are."

Itachi said nothing; he stared down at Sasuke as though curious to his reasoning behind the accusation. He could have been furious, he could have not cared at all, and Sasuke could not tell the difference between the two.

In that case, he reasoned, it wouldn't hurt to keep going. Or maybe it would--maybe it would hurt quite a lot--but he didn't care anymore.

"Was it easy?" Sasuke whispered. Itachi's eyes didn't so much as flicker. "Was it easy to kill them and run? Did you look them in the face when you killed them or did you stab them in the back like the coward you are?"

He clenched his fists and shut his eyes at the pain that followed. It only took him a moment to open them once more, but in that moment, his memory was remarkably clear. Sharp as broken glass. The faces of his mother and father as their blood soaked the wood below their bodies.

In the weeks that followed, no matter how often or for how long he scrubbed or washed the floorboards, the deepest cracks still bore a dark stain. He'd scrubbed the wood until splinters took root in his fingers and the soap water ran pink not with their blood but his, and still nothing--the stains remained, like ghosts to haunt him. Some of the villagers had offered to clean his parent's blood when they cleaned the streets of the bodies of his cousins, aunts, and uncles, and he refused to let them.

Every stroke of the brush against the grains, every splinter, every bowl of rose-tinted water he poured off the pathway and into the dirt.

Every pitying stare from a stranger. Every whisper. Every moment of suffocating silence in their empty house.

All of these things, Sasuke bore alone. All of these things had carved paths through his memory and had defined everything he was. Everything he had become.

He had waited so long for this.

He opened his eyes. Itachi gazed down at him lifelessly, the Sharingan standing out like two pools of blood. If Sasuke had lost his ability to speak for even an instant, it was that sight that brought it back.

"You never could have survived what you forced me to survive," Sasuke spat. "You took the easy way out. You never had to face the mess you left behind."

Itachi interrupted him with a smile that chilled his bones.

"Sasuke, _you_ are the mess I left behind," he said. "And now you're here. Is there any other way I'm supposed to face my…cowardice?" He said the word delicately, as though tasting it.

Sasuke flushed deeply in speechless anger, his mouth opening even though not a sound escaped him. He clenched his hands on the bedspread, tensing until his body ached from the strain. His glance fell to his knees and remained there as he slowly forced himself to calm down.

After a long time, the only thing he could manage to whisper was, "_Why?"_

He felt like a child who needed to be told the monsters beneath his bed weren't real even though he knew they were.

"Why?" Itachi cocked his head to the side. For a moment, it appeared as though he didn't quite understand the question. Then he smiled, almost indulgently. Sasuke felt stunned by the mockery. Itachi understood perfectly. "I've told you why," he said. "I told you _why_ that very night. A test of my container."

Sasuke had heard those words before.

The first time Itachi had told him, his feet were making bloody tracks of their parent's lives on their living room floor. Sasuke had since then heard the words every night, in the midst of his frequent, vivid nightmares. Never once had it made a moment's sense to him, and even now, Itachi repeated it as though it were the most obvious answer in the world.

Even if Sasuke _did_ understand, what would that change? Itachi had still slaughtered their family, and their bodies were burned and scattered into ashes as if they had never existed at all.

"That's not good enough," he said finally, his voice shaking with anger.

"Why not? It's the truth. Are you trying to find answers or an excuse? Do you want to justify my actions with some noble reason?"

Something tightened in Sasuke's chest.

Quickly he stammered, "No! I just--"

"You're supposed to _hate me_, little brother. Not look for reasons to forgive me."

_I_ do _hate you,_ Sasuke thought desperately, wondering if his brother could feel that hatred ripping him to pieces, and if he couldn't, how Sasuke might be able to make him.

"I killed our family," Itachi continued. "Every single one of them but you. It didn't even take very long."

"Shut up, _shut the fuck up_--" Sasuke snarled, clutching the sides of his head as though that would make Itachi _stop._

"Why should I?" Itachi demanded. "This is the answer you're looking for, isn't it? Would you like to hear what our mother's last words were, or our father's?"

_No, no, stop. I don't want--_

"Have you wondered if they begged for their lives as you did?"

And just like that, Sasuke had heard all he could stand to hear.

His body was broken from weeks of neglect and injury, so for all accounts, it should have been very nearly worthless. There wasn't a single part of him that didn't hurt or ache and yet, he didn't care. None of that made any difference. He was on his feet in an instant, body thrumming with pain and adrenaline and strength he'd forgotten he had.

He stood because he was a shinobi, scion of the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Sound. Because he was an Uchiha, and bore their crest far deeper inside than just painted upon his back.

Sasuke stood because Itachi had to die, and he was the only one alive who could kill him. He stood, he leapt forward, and--

And when his fist connected hard with his brother's face, when he felt flesh and bone splinter under his hand, he thought that maybe everything--_everything_ he had suffered and sacrificed for that one moment had been worth it after all.

And it still was not enough--it would never be enough.

Itachi's head whipped back with the force of his punch. Sasuke stared in amazement as time slipped by him in slow motion. He wanted to taste the moment for an eternity, cup it in his palms like something precious and breakable. He couldn't even breathe in the face of it.

Sasuke watched his second hand lash out, watched the sudden spill of red down his brother's chin. Pain rocketed up his arms and he ignored it--he barely noticed it.

_Yes,_ Sasuke thought wildly. Itachi backed a step away from him, although whether it was in surprise or in pain, it didn't matter. That Sasuke had managed either was enough for him.

_Don't stop._

_Don't…_

He fisted Itachi's collar tight into his hand. He felt fabric tear under his grip. He pulled his brother close--close enough so that, for the first time, Sasuke could clearly see--

There wasn't even an inch of height separating their eyes. Disbelief surged through him, weakening his knees, and he forced himself through the shock, because he wasn't done yet.

The bathroom door slammed open with loud crack. The hinges splintered under the weight of Itachi's body as Sasuke threw him against it.

Itachi staggered back with a soft grunt, falling into the bathroom. Sasuke allowed himself just one second--just _one_ to watch, to revel in Itachi's momentary escape from him--before he followed quickly behind. Barefoot, splinters of the broken door bit into the soles of his feet, and he didn't blink. He didn't breathe.

He didn't stop. He didn't stop moving until he could feel Itachi's heat and chakra breathing over his skin. He shuddered at the sensation, and focused his attention on his brother and not the power that rolled off him like water.

His brother. Sasuke couldn't even breathe, watching him. Itachi's eyes were wide and red beneath a spill of dark hair as he stared back.

_He isn't fighting back,_ he thought distantly. _He isn't--is this--is this real?_

He didn't care. It wasn't the battle he'd always envisioned, but it was an ending, and to Sasuke, that was just as good.

Sasuke moved, holding his breath, hands trembling with painful thrill. He couldn't breathe until he felt his hands close around Itachi's collar, until he felt the unmistakable sensation of his knee connecting into his brother's stomach.

Itachi doubled over, gasping for breath.

Sasuke closed his eyes. He took a breath. Sucked it into his lungs like a drowning man who had finally reached the surface.

He opened his eyes when his knees hit tile and broken, chipped pieces of the door. He felt it break skin and bite into his kneecaps, and the pain clarified a world that had gone foggy and red as he watched his brother twist and break beneath his hands and the weight of his body.

Itachi's hand shot up toward him, and the sharp glint of a kunai caught Sasuke by surprise. Without blinking, he knocked it out of his hand. He listened to the metallic clatter of it hitting the tile and skittering away. Satisfied, Sasuke tightened his grip on his collar, pushing his brother back onto the cold bathroom floor.

This was everything he'd wanted for so long. He breathed it in. He tightened his fists in Itachi's clothing and pressed a knee into his gut, forcing almost all of his weight into one place. The pain paled his brother's face, and euphoria sailed through Sasuke's veins.

Again, however, it struck him.

_He isn't fighting back._

_Why--_

Itachi lifted his chin, Sharingan eyes peering out through that dark, frustratingly long hair, and Sasuke understood.

"No!" Sasuke snarled, anger and vicious heat replacing the calculated calm that had consumed him. He tore his gaze away from Itachi's face as the Mangekyou Sharingan flickered in his eyes, because he knew it wouldn't matter how strong he had become. On that field against Itachi, without the Mangekyou, he didn't have a chance. "No, _fuck you_--"

Itachi reached for him--for the back of his neck, probably, to jerk his gaze where he wanted it--but for once, Sasuke was faster. He knocked Itachi's hand back, just like before, gripping his wrist and slamming it back down against the tile beneath him.

He should have held onto it, at least keeping _one_ of his brother's hands out of commission, but he needed both of his. He couldn't wait any longer. Maybe--maybe Itachi didn't have to suffer. His death didn't have to be slow, stretched out over days and days like Sasuke had always dreamed.

He just needed to die, because all Sasuke wanted anymore was peace.

Itachi gasped brokenly as Sasuke gripped his throat in his hands and squeezed.

_Fuck, don't, don't look him in the eyes--_ he thought wildly, and tightened his grip on Itachi's throat. He wanted to feel muscle crush under his fingers. It was all he ever wanted. He watched his brother's skin turn from bloodless to feverish red under his grip.

Not enough, not yet--Itachi's heart was still beating.

"Sasuke--" Itachi rasped. Sasuke furiously shook his head. He didn't look up to Itachi's face, his eyes. He wouldn't.

As it turned out, it didn't matter. Itachi kneed him so hard in the gut that he saw stars burning hot, bright and sudden in his eyes. His vision slid momentarily into darkness but that was all it took for his grip to slacken and Itachi to escape him.

He clutched at the air Itachi left behind. It took Sasuke an eternity to grasp the fact that Itachi had been there, _in his hands_, and that he had escaped. Sasuke could have crumpled from the crippling sense of loss he felt.

Pain burst violently from the back of his neck as Itachi threw his fist down onto it. His body slammed down against the cold bathroom floor. More lights flickered in his eyes, and he coughed blood out onto the white tile.

Sasuke regarded it through narrowed eyes. There was more blood in his throat; he could feel it, he could taste it. He didn't have the strength to spit it out, and a sudden panic overwhelmed him. He was going to be sick, he was going to choke and die on his own fucking blood.

He gagged. His blood tasted sour like bile. His vision swam in mirages of red blood and white tile, white walls. Pain radiated endlessly from his midsection, his neck, and where was Itachi?

"I wouldn't have believed it…"

Itachi was talking. His voice came from above, from behind. It was deep and hoarse--Sasuke might never have recognized it as his brother's.

"But I see, now, how you might have killed him."

Sasuke gagged on the blood in his throat again, blinking down at the tile uncomprehendingly. What the fuck was Itachi babbling about?

Cloth rustled as Itachi bent over him and gripped his shirt by the collar, lifting him to his feet effortlessly. Sasuke shut his eyes as the bright bathroom light filled his vision. His limbs hung uselessly from his body. He couldn't find the strength or the will to make them move--not even when Itachi shoved him against the bathroom mirror with enough force for Sasuke to feel it crack into a thousand spider-web fragments under his back.

A gasp escaped him in a hot splatter of blood and a soft gurgling cry. He felt as though he were drowning, watching the world ripple from under the water, hypnotic and dreamlike. Itachi slid from his vision, into a blur of black that Sasuke had to struggle against to stay conscious.

What for? To watch his brother shove a fist through his chest? Sasuke almost laughed at the thought. He'd done no less to Naruto himself. It would be only fitting.

After a long time, he opened his eyes and met his brother's gaze. The irises of his red Uchiha eyes had twisted into the harsh lines of the Mangekyou Sharingan, cracked like an egg to the darkness inside. His shadows bled from his eyes; death and nothingness was what looked out at Sasuke.

Sasuke waited, but still nothing happened. He was confused, and it twisted quickly into anger. Itachi was not the kind of person to make an idle threat.

He could feel the heat of strength return to him; although not much. Not enough.

Sasuke sneered, lifting his hands to grip the sleeve of Itachi's cloak. Itachi didn't blink.

"Go on!" Sasuke felt himself snarl. He wanted to scream until he was hollow, empty, and dead. "What the fuck are you waiting for? Just do it! You can torture me for a hundred fucking years, so what are you _waiting for?!_"

Itachi tightened his grip. Sasuke felt the bite of glass through his shirt, into his skin. He didn't care. It was only when his brother smiled icily that he felt his stomach tighten.

"That is possible," Itachi said, whisper-soft. A promise.

Sasuke knew better than to believe in any of his promises anymore. He laughed harshly, uncaring of the fact that to do so caused glass to dig more deeply into his back.

"No it isn't. I may not have your fucking eyes but I've been there enough to know better. Even you--" Sasuke gagged on his words, tasting blood, "--even _you_ have limits. You're not a monster yet."

Because that's what he wanted with Naruto, wasn't it? Itachi wanted what was inside him. With that, his brother really would be a monster, in a way that surpassed all of Sasuke's childhood nightmares.

Itachi's smile turned--if possible--even colder. Blood stained the corner of his mouth. Sasuke stared, his pride in even causing that little damage was drumming through his veins, sweeter than adrenaline.

"Would you like to test that? A hundred years in my Tsukuyomi?" Itachi murmured. His deep voice was still raw with pain.

Sasuke met his cold smile with a particularly bitter one. He said nothing. A strange, curious look flickered briefly behind Itachi's red eyes.

"You might die." Itachi felt the need to warn him. Sasuke sneered reflexively.

"Just do it, you fucking coward," he spat.

Despite his words, when Sasuke felt the bright, painful pull of the Mangekyou Sharingan he might never attain, he couldn't help but scream.


	6. Chapter 6

Sasuke's hands never shook when he poured the tea. Although he didn't think of it much, his hands were very similar to his mother's in that respect. Her fingers were longer, a little more scarred, but she bore none of the same burns as he, his brother, and their father did.

It seemed as though an Uchiha male could always be recognized--if not by the crest on their back--then by the particular geography of scar tissue on their fingers. Especially the pads of the thumb and forefinger.

Sasuke had watched the skin of his fingertips peel away under heat and heal into shiny, unmarked pink flesh more times than he could count. His fingerprints came and went. He always knew, as a child, that eventually at least three of his fingers would become too scarred and callused to bear prints.

Just like his father's hands.

His father had the hands of a true shinobi. Dark and rough-skinned, flecked and lined with a variety of scars from years of fighting. He'd watched his father flawlessly control the fires with those hands, handle kunai and shuriken with a skill unrivaled by any other ninja in their clan.

Except Itachi, of course. In the time they lived together, if Itachi had ever been second best to anyone, Sasuke never saw evidence of it.

The massacre proved that theory undeniably.

And his father, with his steady, strong hands--spilled the tea. Just once. Sasuke was almost five years old at the time, and the only witness to the incident.

He watched his father's hands shake, only for a second, and watched as beads of hot tea glistened on the dark tabletop like an accusation. Sasuke stared up at his father in mute surprise. His father glanced down at the droplets quickly and then looked back up at his wide eyes--and smiled.

"Don't tell," his father smiled, a brief tug at his normally stern expression, as he set down the teapot and wiped the moisture away with his sleeve.

The memory haunted Sasuke when he turned nine; almost a year after his parents--his clan, his world, his life--was taken from him. When he made tea for himself for the first time.

Even though his hands were small and awkward as he handled the teapot that his mother had used for as long as he could remember, his hands did not tremble. He didn't spill a drop.

It was one of the many moments that would define the path he would someday choose to lead, that shaped the overwhelming pain of loss into a weapon he could use to strike back against the greatest traitor he'd ever known.

It was the moment he looked down at his pale, small, mostly unscarred hands and knew without a doubt that he would not live long enough to watch his hands become like his father's.

With that in mind, Sasuke poured the tea with his untrembling hands. He poured it into four cups and placed them neatly on his kitchen table. He no longer lived in the house of his birth, but that didn't matter. He knew the placement by heart, regardless of the setup of his new apartment.

A cup for his father, at the head of the table.

One for his mother, across from his father.

One for himself, at his father's left…and one for Itachi, at his father's right.

He never drank. He stood in place, where he belonged. He watched warm steam curl into the air and slowly vanish like lingering ghosts.

Four cups of tea. Two for the dead, and two for those no better than.

- - -

Sasuke woke up in the bathtub with blood soaking his shirt. His head felt as though it were being split open like a melon. He couldn't see straight. Everything was blurry. He hurried to shut his eyes, because it hurt to have them open.

It seemed like a good idea, but it didn't work. It still felt as though hot knives had pierced his eyes, stabbing all the way to the base of his skull, eyelids open or closed.

He groaned softly in pain, and when the sound echoed on the bare bathroom walls, Sasuke knew he was alone in the hotel room. For a moment, he was--disappointed.

Sasuke scowled. His body hurt too much to move, although he was distantly surprised to see that Itachi had placed him at the sloped end of the bathtub, away from the water taps and the faucet that had bruised the center of his back.

Itachi had also seen fit not to restrain him. His arms hung limp and white at his sides. If he wanted, he could lift them, stretch them. Curl his fingers into fists. He wasn't under paralysis, he could move if he had the strength.

Which he didn't. Nor did he make any attempt to try. He was too relieved not to be tied up anymore to think of testing his luck.

Although, considering the injuries left on his back from the mirror, it wasn't in Sasuke to feel grateful. If anything, he felt suspicious and resentful, because it wasn't in Itachi to be so fucking considerate.

He tried to relax. He hurt everywhere. He stared at the ceiling blankly, thinking in a flurry of half-finished thoughts that circled endlessly, beginning and ending nowhere.

After a very long time, Sasuke shut his eyes and laughed, causing tremors of pain to tighten every muscle in his body.

He was alive. He was _awake._

Sasuke hadn't realized it until that moment, but--he had never expected to wake up at all, had he?

He knew, however, from a sound like waves crashing against a distant shore in his ears and the deep tug on his consciousness to a darkness not of his choosing--he would not be awake much longer. Just like the times before in the aftershocks of the Mangekyou Sharingan, he'd feel himself slip away, drowning in his own mind, lost on the fringes of dreams and reality.

Sasuke wondered, almost laughing to himself, if he'd be able to tell what was real from what was false this time. He still wasn't sure about _last_ time. It all felt blurry and distant, as though it had happened years ago in a dream.

He opened his eyes and glanced around the bathroom tiredly, wondering, for the first time, if any of it was real at all.

Where did the nightmare end? When did it even begin?

He didn't know. He couldn't remember. Maybe Itachi _could_ trap him forever; a hundred years of torment locked in his brother's Tsukuyomi. Maybe everything he had seen, everything he had suffered--everything was only a never-ending nightmare of Itachi's design.

Just maybe, lying on a hospital bed in the Village he thought he'd abandoned, he was still eight years old. Or thirteen, perhaps, and caught in a hundred-year nightmare.

It wasn't so impossible, when he thought about it. After all, was there anything Itachi couldn't do?

His clarity ebbed away from him in gentle, almost lulling rhythms. He was exhausted. His body ached, and he would have given anything to sleep--_really_ sleep, dreamlessly and deeply.

Sasuke shut his eyes, leaned back, and felt himself slip away.

- - -

Naruto stood over him, Sakura at his side.

The urge to stand beside them was suffocating in its intensity. He couldn't breathe; he wanted it so badly, because that's the way things were supposed to be, wasn't it? Even if he couldn't stand them half of the time--they had attached themselves to him in a way that had nothing to do with how much he liked them and everything to do with the fact that he belonged with them.

He knew they would follow him eventually and he was dreading it, because if they followed him, they would fall with him. And he didn't want that.

The edges of Naruto's form bled into the wall behind him. Sasuke watched as the room swam in his vision. Nausea tightened in his chest at the unnatural motion. He was going to be sick.

Naruto knelt beside him.

"Get the fuck up, Sasuke. Get up."

Sasuke wanted to laugh, _Fuck you, dumbass,_ but he couldn't seem to. His back burned with the aches and cuts that generally resulted from being thrown into a mirror. He didn't have to look down to see his blood staining the white bathtub beneath him. It was still drying, sticky and dark, on his pale hands and the fabric of his clothes.

"You're coming with us. We're taking you home," Naruto continued. There wasn't anything but certainty in his voice. What had Sasuke ever done for him that was worthy of such faith?

He could think of nothing. He couldn't turn away from them. He was afraid to blink. Would they still be there when he opened his eyes again? He didn't know, and the possibility was more than he wanted to think about.

"I--" Sasuke managed; his voice was nothing more than a throaty gasp. When was the last time he'd spoken? He swallowed and tried again. "I can't go back. I have to kill him. He has to die before--before--"

_Before I come home. With you. To you. I can't go back yet._

It was Sakura who came to the side of the bathtub and sat down on the rim. He barely recognized her. She stared down at him with something almost like pity and he felt a sensation like a knife twisting in his gut.

"You killed him, Sasuke," she whispered. "You're covered in his blood."

Sasuke laughed, long and bitter. It was practically tangible, something he could taste in his mouth and spit out to mingle with the blood around him. His blood. Not Itachi's. It couldn't be--he'd remember that. He'd remember it because he has to. His life is leading to that moment, that accomplishment.

He'd remember it.

Wouldn't he?

Sasuke stared up at Sakura, wide-eyed and confusion turning into a cold knot in the center of his chest.

"No," he shook his head, ignoring the sharp pains that followed. "No. I couldn't have. This is my blood, not his--"

Sakura leaned over him, fingertips gracing the side of his face. Confidence dripped away from her every move like water. This wasn't the girl he'd left behind. He didn't know what to make of her. He stared, unable to continue.

"His blood, your blood," she shrugged. "What makes you think there was ever any difference?"

Sasuke swallowed hard. Her form flickered like a dying candle. Was she really there? He'd watched Itachi put a fist through her chest, hadn't he? He had.

He'd seen a lot of things. There was no telling what was real anymore.

Sasuke shut his eyes. He felt as her cool touch evaporated from his skin like it had never been there at all.

- - -

Blood pooled on cold stone, an underground river of spilt life. The coliseum stretched around him, massive and empty, with archways like black eyes watching out at him from the dark.

Sasuke stared down at the broken body before him, at the blood and white skin and vacant open eyes, and could only wonder when he had begun to think of everyone in his life as one stepping-stone to another, greater and darker, on a path that lead only to death.

- - -

He slipped through dreams like smoke through a screen. He often woke screaming. Occasionally, he woke with a hand pressing against the curve of his forehead. Sweltering heat consumed him, and while he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but black and red and would gladly give himself back to the dreams.

A damp cloth pressed against his forehead. A hint of memory stabbed through him, reality seeping through the cracks of his dream.

"Brother?" he murmured, reaching out.

The hand pulled away before he could touch it, and he was asleep before his arm had even fallen back to his side.

- - -

When he woke, his blood was still wet around him.

Someone had placed the stopper in the drain. Must have been Itachi, because as far as Sasuke could remember, the only other person who had ever entered the hotel room where he was being held captive was the medic-nin. The woman Itachi had killed.

Or had he? Sasuke really wasn't sure anymore. The possibilities stretched out in front of him like an open desert. There were thousands of possible explanations although there were no real answers.

But Sasuke had gotten used to that, over the years.

For a moment, he drifted away from his train of thought; his head drooped back against the cold tile. He moved his fingers--gently, because the movement hurt the tendons in his wrist like nothing he'd felt before--and idly ran his fingertips through the cold, water-thinned blood beneath him. There was a significant amount of it. At the very least, he'd stopped bleeding.

Sasuke thought of unstopping the drain.

He was too tired to move. His body trembled; he felt sick and hot. He just wanted to lie still and wait for exhaustion to pull him back to sleep.

The door opened loudly, unexpectedly. It jarred him into wakefulness, jerking his head towards the sound, even though he knew who would be standing in the doorway.

Regardless, Sasuke still cringed and shut his eyes at the sight of his brother. He couldn't summon up a stronger reaction than that. His head swam in sudden heat, his stomach tightening.

"Leave me the fuck alone," Sasuke whispered bitterly, and turned his head away from the door. He wasn't hungry. If anything, he felt nauseous and dizzy from heat. He wasn't in the mood for any of Itachi's fucking company. If it could even be _called_ that.

Itachi, unsurprisingly, did not deign to say anything to that. His footsteps didn't pause at the door; he set something down on the sink counter before venturing further into the bathroom. When the soft, barely audible sounds of his footfalls came to a stop at the side of the bathtub, the heat crawling over Sasuke's skin became sweltering and almost unbearable. He needed to breathe. Itachi was crowding him.

"Itachi--" Sasuke began, voice strained with anger. He wanted to continue, _Leave me alone, get the hell out, go fucking die--_but he couldn't.

Itachi placed a hand on his forehead. He brushed beneath Sasuke's tangled black hair, his palm large and solid. His hand felt cool. In contrast to the painful heat that was beginning to feel as though it were consuming Sasuke completely--it was stunning.

Sasuke parted his lips to speak, but the only sound that escaped him was a breathy exhalation. Without thinking, he lifted his chin, Itachi's hand curling more firmly against his forehead.

_What…what is he…?_

Itachi pulled his hand away, and Sasuke couldn't clamp his teeth down around the sound he made in protest. His eyes slid open as he felt his face burn. He stared hard at a vague imperfection in the white tile on the other side of his face--anywhere Itachi wasn't--and managed to mutter, "It's--it's hot," in the hopes that it would explain…anything. Everything.

He could feel the weight of Itachi's gaze. It hurt. It made his skin crawl in steadily rising discomfort.

"You have a fever," Itachi replied, as though Sasuke hadn't spoken. Maybe he hadn't. He couldn't tell anymore.

Sasuke could have snorted, had he the strength. A fever felt like the least of his problems, all things considered. He was lying in a cold pool of his own watered-down blood in a hotel room, being kept captive by his psychotic older brother. Itachi was worried about a _fever?_

"Who the fuck cares," Sasuke snapped. He felt his voice rumble through his throat. He definitely spoke that time. He was inwardly a little pleased at the amount of force he'd packed into the words.

His forehead burned more steadily, in the memory of Itachi's cool hand pressed against it.

A fever. Well, that explained a few things. He was almost relieved. He took a deep breath, shifting uncomfortably in the bathtub. He hurt all over. A small part of him couldn't help but hope that if he were getting sick, that meant Itachi would take him out of the bathroom.

He almost heard himself promise his brother, _I won't do it again,_ but inwardly recoiled and refused to. If Itachi wanted a guarantee that Sasuke wouldn't attack him or try to kill him, he would have to break his younger brother's arms and legs. Otherwise, Sasuke would never stop trying.

He just needed the strength to do it.

Sasuke lolled his head to the side, and when he opened his eyes he felt a pang of surprise at realizing Itachi was still there.

Itachi was still crouched his side, watching him intently. Sasuke swallowed hard, feeling momentarily suffocated by the closeness and the heat.

Heat from his fever. He was sick. It made sense. His head was swimming in it. What the hell was Itachi planning on doing, just sitting there like that?

"What do you _want_?" Sasuke snapped, his voice a guttural snarl. The bathtub was cold against his back and legs, but the longer Itachi continued to linger, staring at him, the less good it did for him. He felt dizzy. He wanted to be left alone--and Itachi wouldn't _leave._

His arms hurt, but he could still move them. Even though it stole the breath from his lungs to do it, he swung his right arm upwards with a fist aimed at his brother's quiet staring eyes. Unsurprisingly, Itachi struck out with his own hand, wrapping a hand around Sasuke's wrist, slamming it against the tile above his head.

Sasuke screamed. Just once. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood to make sure it stayed that way.

Itachi's hand tightened, twisting his arm. Colorful spots appeared in his eyes, blotting out most of his brother's face and the white bathroom walls around him. In an instant, he was giddy with pain, drunk with it. He inhaled sharply--_not_ screaming--and without his consent, it turned into a breathless sort of laugh, manic and strained.

"Itachi--it hurts--" he choked out, tasting blood on his tongue. "Let go, fuck--"

Itachi ignored him. He pressed his younger brother's arm more firmly against the cold tile wall, fingers leaving imprints into his skin that Sasuke could swear he would feel forever. The colorful dots in his eyes promptly turned black, and his jaw dropped wide in shock. Itachi's hand was cool, not as cold as the tile his arm was pressed against, but softer and alive, not burning to the touch.

Clarity stabbed through the haze of pain, and Sasuke almost moaned in relief. His eyelids fluttered sleepily shut, as though he could barely stay awake, but everything hurt too much to sleep.

"What if," Itachi whispered and, rousing slightly, Sasuke blearily tried to meet his eyes as he spoke. "I don't?"

Sasuke swallowed hard. His world had narrowed down to sharp extremes; the ice-cold bathtub at his back, the fever eating him alive, and his brother, a portrait of contrasting colors.

"Let me go," Sasuke felt himself say. His voice was low and hoarse. Pain flared up his arm and his eyes slid shut, away from the world of white and black and red he was growing far too accustomed to.

No answer.

"Please," he added. Hatred churned solidly in his gut. "_Please._"

"No," came his brother's soft reply. Sasuke didn't know what to say to that, so he laughed. Itachi didn't seem to mind.

- - -

Sasuke opened his eyes. It was bright, so pale and overwhelming. The room spun wildly and within mere instants his head began to throb. He hadn't moved at all, but he was motion-sick regardless. A soft, pained groan escaped him.

He heard footsteps in the doorway. The faint sound echoed like a hammer inside his skull.

"Stop," he mumbled hoarsely, and softly added, "_hurts._"

The footsteps continued undaunted.

"It's good to see you're awake, Sasuke. I do not have much time." Itachi was at his side, towering above him. The bathroom light glinted around the curve of his head, making it difficult for Sasuke to discern the features of his face.

_Please. Stop talking. It hurts._

He thought he said it out loud. He wasn't sure. He couldn't tell if his mouth was moving or not, but Itachi seemed to ignore him either way. His throat felt tight. He listened to the gentle clatter of a dish being placed on the linoleum floor at the side of the bathtub. It was just within reach, should he find the strength to reach for it.

Sasuke shut his eyes, not feeling particularly hungry. He could hear the way Itachi's cloak whispered along the bathroom floor. The sound abruptly ceased, and he could taste his own pulse in the length of time that Itachi fell silent, went so very still that even Sasuke could not hear him. He considered opening his eyes just to see if his brother was still in the room.

Perhaps Itachi had left hours ago. Had he drifted off again?

The press of a warm hand against his forehead caught him by such surprise that he didn't even have the time to make a sound. His eyes snapped open wide as he bodily jerked away from the touch.

It didn't take very long for the pain to follow; the muscles in his back tensed and twitched in a spasm, one of his knees locked sharply, and distantly he felt the sensation of fireworks lighting up the nerves in his arms as he scrambled away. He couldn't cry out and he had run out of room in which to force between himself and his brother.

Itachi gave him a curious look. Sasuke stared back, scattered images ghosting through his mind--_his brother's hand on his forehead, his brother's hand gripping his wrist_. The picture flickered and abruptly vanished.

Sasuke felt his chest tighten. "Why--" He swallowed. He forced the words out. "Why did you--?"

"Why did I…what?" Itachi questioned, his voice neutral. His eyes revealed nothing. Sasuke could have screamed with frustration. He thought of his arms above his head. White walls and floors and blood freckling the tile. Around him, the bathroom was clean. The bathtub was dry. None of it made any sense.

_Why do you do anything that you do?_ His thoughts whirled desperately. _To what end? Why kill our mother, our father, why--_

"Why me," Sasuke said finally, his voice trembling. "Why am I _here?_ Why did you bring me here, why are you _keeping me_ here?"

No reply. Maybe he hadn't heard the question. Maybe Sasuke hadn't even asked it--although he could still feel it burning on his tongue. Itachi's eyes were unreadable, but oddly wide.

"Sasuke, you… You came to me with blood on your hands," Itachi whispered, as though to speak too loudly would hurt Sasuke in some way. He was silent for a long time. If he was expecting Sasuke to reply to this, he was going to be disappointed. "You don't remember," he finally murmured.

He sounded remarkably unsurprised. If Sasuke could speak, he might have commented on it, but he could not seem to remember how. He couldn't find the strength to move his lips or the words to communicate what he was thinking.

_Do I remember how I got here?_ He thought with a laugh, which sounded--even to him--more like a pained gasp than a real laugh. _I don't remember this morning. I don't remember yesterday._

That didn't seem right to him. That couldn't be happening. There couldn't possibly be so many gaps in his memory, so many days and moments and faces replaced with jumbled static.

Sasuke could feel panic slipping through his bloodstream. He tried to calm down, because the thought of completely losing it in front of his brother was more than he could stomach.

He took a deep breath, leaning his head back against the cold tile wall. Sasuke decided, quite simply, that it wasn't real. That it _couldn't_ be, because if it was--he couldn't accept what that meant.

Having decided, he felt a calm rush over him like a cold wave of the ocean against the sand. It overpowered him, sucked him in under the current, and he let it.

_I'm dreaming, right?_ he thought calmly, _I'm dreaming._

Sasuke shut his eyes, and in a moment, he was.

- - -

Dreaming.

He opened his eyes. Naruto sat on the rim of the bathtub beside him.

"You aren't asleep," he informed Sasuke gently.

_But I can't possibly be awake._

Although Sasuke could have sworn he didn't say it out loud, Naruto reacted as though he heard the words clearly. The look he offered Sasuke in reply was one of painful concern. Sasuke could barely stomach it, so he looked away.

"I think you're losing it," Naruto said.

Sasuke laughed. He couldn't disagree, because he was alone in the bathroom when he opened his eyes.

- - -  
A day passed, or what felt like one. It could have been much more, or much less, and Sasuke would not have been able to tell.

Itachi stood in the bathroom door, his face obscured, muttering in a voice so quiet it could barely be heard above the dripping water tap. The room slid in and out of focus, but his brother, at the center of his vision, somehow remained vivid and clear.

"I have little time to waste. The Akatsuki is growing impatient," Itachi informed him.

Sasuke stared at him blankly, as though his brother has ceased speaking a language he could understand. He felt vaguely as though he'd forgotten something, something important, and no matter how hard he tried to think of it, the memory continued to elude him.

Itachi gave him one final, intense look before he turned around and shut the bathroom door. Sasuke shrugged at his departure and abruptly wondered why it hurt to do so--but even more perplexing was the fact that he was lying in a bathtub, and he could not remember how he had gotten there and when.

- - -

For three more days, Sasuke drifted through dreams of a hazy, half-finished life that began with his birth and ended with his brother's death. He could see no future beyond that, only a great black nothing that seemed to be waiting for him--and for the very first time, he was afraid to step toward it alone.

Slowly, he began to wake. When he did, it started to seem as though all of his memories lay like discarded photographs on the floor beneath his feet. He felt as though he could pick up any he chose, and he need only touch it before--

_He is fifteen_. He is training with monsters in the depths of the coliseum, the snakes that crawl on their bellies toward him in soundless fluid motion, and slowly he is beginning to learn what it truly means to fear death. He feels the blood and the sweat and pain makes so that he can't even see that--

_He is thirteen_. He watches the smiling faces of those who are not his family but could have been, had he truly let them be, and for the first time in so long he knows that he is almost, _almost_ happy enough to forget revenge, to forget his brother because--

_He is eight_. Itachi is the sun that his universe revolves around. Sasuke wants to be just like him, be an equal and better, to be everything that defines the Uchiha clan as a whole; strength and mystery, a container for generations of technique and secrecy passed down into blood-red eyes.

Sasuke was all of these things. Or he had been, and what was he now?

Now Sasuke was a prisoner of his own volition, one who counts the time by the drip of a leaky faucet, by the unpredictable comings and goings of a sun that leaves him all too often in darkness.

It took him six hours to piece together the bits he could remember and fill in the blanks of everything he couldn't. The process felt like physical labor, even though he was only lying back with his eyes trained to the ceiling above him, his mind working with painful slowness. The longer he remained awake, struggling against the exhaustion that hindered him, the sharper the edges became on the memories he could collect.

He arranged the facts as he knew them, straining to pin down how they fit together, and he wondered what sort of picture they might form once he had finished. He thought of his life like a mural painted in blood, telling of his past and his chosen future.

Everything he had begun to lose since coming to Itachi, he slowly began to recover. Sasuke couldn't help but question, then, how long he had been drifting in and out of consciousness. Recovery was such a slow process it should have been nearly impossible for him to do it on his own, especially from particularly violent attacks. He could spend half his life in a coma brought on by the Tsukuyomi and he would never know. The dreams would be his only sign.

It was possible that everything he had seen, everything before his eyes even at that moment, was given to him by Itachi. Even if he remembered everything, he would never know what was real and what was an illusion, a fever-induced hallucination, or just a dream.

Sasuke stared blankly at the white ceiling and tried to remember the beginning. It escaped him. It fluttered on the edge of his mind, in a place that he could not quite reach, and after a while, he stopped trying.

Instead, he shut his eyes and envisioned the end.

- - -

Itachi was sitting on the rim of the bathtub when he awoke. Sasuke jolted reflexively, and his body tightened in pain. When Itachi did nothing and said nothing, he gradually managed to calm himself down. His brother's back was turned to him, his head lowered; he seemed to be sleeping, or at least very deep in thought.

It was a posture that Sasuke was uncomfortably familiar with. Memory sent a tremor through him--the memory of his brother's back hunched over his knees, legs hanging from the edge of the walkway that wrapped around their house, eyes open and staring into a distance that only he could see.

Sasuke closed his eyes.

"Sasuke." Itachi's voice couldn't have caused a ripple over still water. Sasuke didn't stir or otherwise show he had noticed his brother had spoken at all. Given enough time, he was sure Itachi would just leave. Maybe he wasn't really there at all, maybe…

"Sasuke," Itachi repeated. He'd always hated to repeat himself. Sasuke remembered that. He remembered--everything, didn't he? His mind was filled with slow blinking lights, flashes of unobstructed memory into a life that felt distant and disconnected from him. It could have happened to anyone else, he was merely a spectator, one who knew all the names and faces and how they connected but not _why._

Eventually, Sasuke grew tired of thinking and opened his eyes. Itachi was watching him. He flushed and turned his head away. "What do you want?" he demanded. His voice cracked between the syllables.

Silence. The leaky faucet dripped between his feet.

"What do you remember?" Itachi asked. Sasuke tensed unexpectedly.

"Everything," he replied flatly. He tilted his chin upwards to the ceiling, filling his eyes with planes of white. He could taste the word. _Everything._ All of the how, the when, the where--and not why.

Their parents were dead. Itachi had killed them. He had sworn to kill his brother for that crime, and he had _meant it_. Despite that, when Sasuke attempted to reach inside himself and find his pain and make of it a weapon--he discovered there was nothing there. It was as though the inside of his chest had been eroded away by a century of relentless waves.

_How long have I been here?_ he thought hopelessly. _How did this happen?_

"But you have forgotten your purpose," Itachi said, interrupting his thoughts. His tone was unreadable.

_I remember. It just doesn't matter anymore._

Itachi twisted around to face him, and when their eyes met, Sasuke felt nothing but pain. He wanted to shut his eyes and couldn't.

"That was not my intent," he added softly, and Sasuke nearly didn't hear it at all. It almost sounded like an apology. Maybe it was. Why would it matter--this was very likely just a dream. Sasuke found his willpower and turned his head to stare at the white bathroom tile.

"Sasuke," his brother said. "Don't look away. I have an offer for you."

He wanted to ignore Itachi, to slip away to better dreams. Despite himself, Sasuke cast his brother a look over his shoulder. For an instant, he wondered how he had ever managed to look away at all.

"What is it?" he managed, his voice a thin and unstable thing.

"The Tsukuyomi is not only meant for torture. It is a world of my creation. If I wanted, I could show you anything," Itachi said quietly. Sasuke could only stare in confusion. What was this? What was Itachi trying to do? He didn't understand.

"Why would you want to?" he muttered skeptically, after he'd taken a breath.

"I need you out of the way until my plans come to fruition," Itachi answered. "Until I am ready to be tested. I can no longer return here, and I cannot have you follow me this time."

Rather suddenly, Sasuke could not remember how to breathe. His chest tightened as he felt something cold and painful run through his veins. He shuddered, clenching his jaw.

"There is still much I have to do," Itachi murmured, and stared down at the palms of his hands. After a long time, he looked up and their eyes met. Sasuke did not look away. "So what is it that you want? I could give you our mother and father, and to you the illusion would make it seem as though they never died at all. I can give you a lifetime in your village."

"And then?" Sasuke questioned softly, even though he knew the answer. He hadn't agreed to this--but he wasn't saying _no_ either.

"When the time comes," Itachi answered, after a brief, thoughtful silence, "I will come for you, and I will wake you fully. By that time, you will likely have gained back your strength. We will find a way for you to attain the eyes I have." He paused again. The silence was heavy. "In the Tsukuyomi, I will give you something you want, and then I will take it away. In return, you will give me the challenge _I_ want."

Sasuke stared at him. His stomach tightened more painfully with every word. Itachi was offering him a dream. Constant hypnosis with no sense of time or place, only illusion to keep him company. He didn't really understand what the point was--wasn't he already dreaming? He was tired of it, he wanted to unravel it and trace the core, the beginning, and wake himself up.

He realized, coldly, studying his brother, that it was impossible. He would continue to be lost in Itachi's Tsukuyomi, trapped in a hundred-year nightmare.

The Mangekyou Sharingan twisted Itachi's irises abruptly, the way a key unlocks a door. The pull of his brother's genjutsu was not instantaneous or forceful, as he had come to expect it; it tugged him gently forward instead of dragging him. It almost felt as though he had a choice whether to follow it or not.

A choice.

"Give me something real," Sasuke whispered abruptly. His eyes followed ribbons of shivering color weave around him, a surreal signature of genjutsu taking hold, but this time it came without pain. He had forgotten such a thing was possible. "Anything real. Something. I."

_Something I can believe in even if I shouldn't._

Itachi watched him. He reached forward, and gently placed a hand over his younger brother's eyes. Sasuke exhaled, tensing momentarily, and the movement caused pain to twinge everywhere he could name and a few places he couldn't. He relaxed, and after a second, let his eyes slide shut beneath Itachi's hand.

"Itachi," he said, feeling a stab of panic. He could still see the threads of his brother's genjutsu pouring into his pupils, eyes open or shut.

His voice, when he spoke, swept over Sasuke like a cool, rushing tide.

"I'll give you everything back," he said.

Bitterly, Sasuke muttered, "Just to take it away again?"

He couldn't see it, but he felt his brother nod once.

"Yes. This time, I cannot have you forget." His voice was remarkably gentle. It was unsettling, and Sasuke could only sigh in response. After a long time, he felt Itachi move his hand, trailing it down over his nose and mouth, coming slowly to rest around his throat.

Sasuke took a breath, tensing, and eventually relaxed. Itachi's hand was warm and dry, and his thumb sat carefully against the cord of muscle on Sasuke's throat. He could feel it more acutely with every beat of his heart.

He swallowed hard. Slowly, Itachi tightened his grip, holding him in place as though he had any intention of moving away. The colors intensified and swayed above his eyes. He felt very heavy; everything seemed like the ending to his dream, or the beginning of a new one.

"It doesn't hurt," Sasuke observed, his voice a whisper, barely heard above the beating of his heart.

For a long time, Itachi was silent. It wasn't until Sasuke stopped expecting an answer that he replied, just as quietly, "It never had to."

It wasn't funny. Sasuke laughed anyway, for just a second, and abruptly stopped. His body trembled. The illusion poured brightly into his eyes, and he had already forgotten to be afraid by the time the room slid out of focus, into the darkness, and he felt at peace.

-End.


End file.
